ZAGG Square: How Connected Leadership Enabled Growth
What a warehouse game revealed about trust, fulfillment, and the capacity to grow
A recurring four-square game brought people together across organizational levels. Those relationships helped surface fulfillment constraints and supported a redesign built on trust, employee knowledge, and capable team leaders.
By Brian Packer · Published
Some of the most useful conversations I had at ZAGG happened around a four-square court.
We called the game ZAGG Square. It was a recurring part of our workday, played in a warehouse used for marketing banners and trade-show materials. People from different parts of the company could get to know one another there. Over time, those relationships helped me see a serious operational problem and work with others to address it.
The experience still shapes how I think about Connected Leadership: staying close enough to understand what people are experiencing, then helping them build the capacity to respond.
A court that brought people together
Our version of four-square used an oversized court painted on the warehouse floor. Two people shared each square, but we rotated individually. If you made the error, you came out. Your partner stayed.
That small difference mattered. There were no fixed teams. A customer service representative could find themselves playing alongside an executive, then someone from another department. We played at scheduled times in the midmorning and midafternoon. Everyone was invited. We even set up a camera so employees who were traveling could watch.
I made a point of participating when I was not traveling. People got to know me, and I got to know them. Conversations became easier. I heard things I might never have learned by staying with my own team or waiting for a formal meeting.
Scheduled four-square competitions at ZAGG were also described in a June 2011 KSL account published as part of Zions Bank’s Speaking on Business series. [1]
The fulfillment problem came into view
Conversations among customer service employees about delayed direct-to-customer orders caught my attention. I began asking questions and meeting with people in operations and shipping.
What emerged was a growing gap between demand and the company’s ability to fulfill it. The operation was still using processes developed when the business was much smaller. Demand had increased, but the processes and capacity had not kept pace. The backlog kept growing.
The people doing the work were overwhelmed. The situation required a closer look at the system they were being asked to operate.
This is an example of what Legacy Sustained calls the Reality Gap: the difference between what leaders believe is happening and what people actually experience. Customer service was hearing the consequences. Operations was living with the constraints. Those experiences needed to inform the decisions being made across the company.
Trust created room to act
I brought the findings to the executive team and offered to take responsibility for operations while continuing to lead marketing. We could keep generating demand, but without the ability to deliver, I worried that I could “grow us to death.”
Taking on both responsibilities was possible because the marketing team already had capable leaders. I trusted them to lead their own teams and initiatives. Their work did not have to wait for me to make every decision.
The operations team also knew me. We had relationships before I stepped into that responsibility. That familiarity gave us a foundation for the difficult work ahead.
The capacity to respond was already spread across the organization. The next task was to give people a system in which they could use it.
Redesigning the work with the people who knew it
We worked through a demanding redesign of logistics. We outsourced parts of the operation to a logistics partner. A number of experienced ZAGG employees became employees of that partner, bringing their knowledge of our products and processes into the new arrangement.
That knowledge mattered. The transition depended on people who understood the work, as well as a different way of organizing it.
We built the ability to fulfill much larger orders. That mattered as ZAGG expanded into major retail relationships. Those opportunities required shipping capacity our earlier operation could not support.
ZAGG began its Best Buy rollout in 2008 with three products in 300 stores, according to the company’s November 2010 earnings call. [2] A retail commitment of that size made fulfillment capability essential. We had to be able to deliver.
Building capacity for a much larger business
ZAGG’s net sales grew from $5.14 million in 2007 to $19.79 million in 2008. That is roughly $5 million to almost $20 million in a single year. [3]
For a small business, that is tremendous growth. The fulfillment constraints we encountered showed why the way we worked had to change as the company grew. Generating demand and winning larger customers brought commitments that the whole organization had to be equipped to keep.
That work involved marketing, sales, operations, our logistics partner, and people who knew our products and customers. Trust helped us work across those boundaries. Stronger systems gave people the capacity to deliver.
Developing the leaders who could sustain it
As the operation developed, I promoted a strong member of the team to Director of Operations.
That is an important part of the outcome for me. The marketing team’s ability to lead had made it possible to give operations the attention it needed. Building leadership within operations helped carry that same principle forward.
For leaders facing growth today, this experience raises a few practical questions:
Where do you regularly spend time with people outside your own reporting lines? What are customer service and frontline teams experiencing that has not reached you? Can your team keep making progress when your attention is needed elsewhere? Who is becoming more capable of leading because of the way you lead?
ZAGG Square made contact easier. What followed required listening, trust, operational changes, and people prepared to take responsibility. Together, those elements helped us build a company better able to deliver on its opportunities.
About this account
Brian Packer’s firsthand account of ZAGG Square and the company’s operational development. References below document ZAGG’s reported net sales, its Best Buy rollout, and its scheduled four-square games.
Sources and references
- Chris Redgrave, “ZAGG,” Zions Bank Speaking on Business, published by KSL, June 14, 2011 — Scheduled four-square competitions at ZAGG, described in June 2011.
- ZAGG Incorporated, Third Quarter 2010 Financial Results Conference Call, November 9, 2010, Exhibit 99.3 — Company statement that the Best Buy rollout began in 2008 with three products in 300 stores.
- ZAGG Incorporated, Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2008, Results of Operations and Consolidated Statements of Operations — Net sales $19,791,603 in 2008 and $5,135,715 in 2007; approximately 285% growth.