On a recent visit to The Urban Electric Co.’s workshop in Charleston, South Carolina, I noticed a life-sized cardboard cutout of Elvis draped in a gold Mylar boa, standing alongside a row of chemical-filled dunk tanks. Mr. Presley doesn’t have anything to do with the company’s nickel plating, but his presence on the manufacturing floor has everything to do with the way company founder and CEO Dave Dawson runs the 15-year-old lighting business.
“About five years ago, there was a period where I felt like there wasn’t enough focus on all of the good things people were doing,” says Dawson. So he started a peer-nominated Rock Star of the Month program. Every month, the team creates a surprise “flash mob,” with a boombox playing Elvis songs, tambourines, and plenty of singing and shouting as employees parade through the factory to deliver the cardboard King to the chosen star. Dawson also orchestrates the flash mobs to celebrate promotions, like when an employee finishes an apprenticeship and becomes a craftsman. “You hear it coming, but you don’t know where we’re going to stop,” he explains. “Then, all of the sudden, you find yourself surrounded by 15, 20, 25 people cheering, yelling and high-fiving you. On a fundamental level, there’s something very satisfying about it that most people don’t experience in their daily work.”
Inside the factory, the company’s values are omnipresent—both among the people I met and in the space itself. As he walked me through the manufacturing process of Urban Electric’s fixtures, Dawson greeted employees from all corners of the factory by name, often tossing in an anecdote about their strengths or a recent accomplishment. And over each of the workshop’s two floors, banners that read “Always proud, never satisfied” hung overhead—a battle cry for the entire company that complements its six core values, which are emblazoned atop every performance review and on the training room’s wall.
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