Business

Tiana Velez: Workers help unlucky Nu Wheel come full circle

The closure of the Veterans Memorial Overpass, just north of East Ajo Way and South Palo Verde Road, affected numerous businesses on either side of the overpass. Kent Stevens, owner of Nu Wheel Inc., was one. Feeling overwhelmed with trying to balance his employees' needs while keeping his business running, Stevens sought the advice of consultant Marie Miyashiro. The history On June 7, 2004, the Veterans Memorial Overpass was shut down as crews prepared to demolish and rebuild the nearly 50-year-old bridge. Upon hearing of the impending closure, Kent Stevens, owner of Nu Wheel on South Palo Verde Road, was stunned. "To say it left a lump in my throat would be an understatement," he said. The bridge closure, which stopped north- and southbound traffic for a year, was the latest in an almost unbelievable string of misfortunes for Stevens that began three years earlier on Sept. 11, 2001. Up until then, it had been business as usual at Nu Wheel. Opened in 1990, the name Nu Wheel is a bit of a misnomer. Stevens' shop actually specializes in restoring used or damaged wheels - the metal frames your car tires come wrapped around. Nu Wheel's team of nine employees can rebuild, weld, cut, paint and restore to like-new appearance some of the most banged-up wheels caused by accidents or the city's roughest potholes - all for about a third of the cost of buying new ones. About 85 percent of the shop's sales and repairs are to wholesalers or body shops in Arizona and around the country. Much of the work comes by referral from insurance companies, and business was good. But after 9/11, sales dropped 35 percent - and the news wasn't about to get better soon. "Right after we started the recovery from that, they closed Ajo," he said, referring to a year-long road project along East Ajo Way. In November 2003, Pima County officials announced they would be closing the overpass the following summer. A year later, in November 2004, two men in a station wagon backed into Nu Wheel's front windows, causing about $8,000 in damage. In an ironic twist, the two managed to run off with a set of unfinished wheels for which they might have received "about $12" scrap metal," Stevens said. "But I always tell them (my employees), if we can get through the bridge (closing), we can get through anything." When Stevens says that he's talking not only about the financial strain those projects had on the business but the personal strain, too. Today Using a process she calls "productive communication" - a practical business translation of Marshall Rosenberg's book "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" - consultant Marie Miyashiro explained how Stevens' frustration with the business' performance was creeping into the way he dealt with employees. "He had a solid, good business that needed attention in certain areas," Miyashiro said. Stevens admitted to becoming "irritated" in the past when an order was late or an employee's performance dipped, and acknowledged he didn't always stop to think of why. Rather, "His strategy was to come up with an idea and tell his employees how to do it. Sometimes, though, it didn't meet their needs," Miyashiro said. "Human beings have such a high need for autonomy that when they're told to do something and they feel they have no choice, they'll either resist it or they'll do it but pay you back somewhere else," she said. Miyashiro cited the case of an employee who repeatedly arrived at work five to 10 minutes late. Her boss demanded she arrive on time and she did, but later confided to Miyashiro that she now made sure to clock out exactly at quitting time, too. By welcoming communication with employees, managers and business owners can actually become more productive by implementing policies and procedures that everyone in the company can get behind, Miyashiro reasoned. "Instead of him (Stevens) mandating tasks, he now receives and incorporates more input from employees and is developing surprisingly better solutions than he had originally developed alone," she said. The most recent example of this occurred when Stevens mentioned to his assistant that he was thinking of painting a flat yellow stripe along the outside windows to catch the attention of passing motorists. His assistant made the comment that at the height he wanted it, the stripe would directly block her view through the glass. "In the past I would have said, 'It's a stripe, get over it,' " Stevens said. This time he took her advice and considered angling the stripe upward at the point where it reached her window. The result is a pattern that is actually more eye-catching than the flat line he had proposed. Similar conversations have boosted employee morale, and Stevens said he's impressed with what he's seen thus far. "I think for a while I thought management was, 'You do this, this and this,' " he said, ticking off an imaginary checklist with his finger. "As of now, I hope, at this point the business is more of a team. Everybody plays a part in this."