Q: You’ve made a career of taking over troubled companies. How did that become your specialty?
A: I don’t think anybody does this on purpose. When you get out of college I don’t think you say, “Hmm, I’ll get involved in turnaround situations.”
In my first job out of college with General Motors, I got involved in a foundry, and that was a difficult environment. When you’re continuously pouring liquid iron and something goes wrong, you’ve got to make something happen real, real quick.
I also found myself supervising people who had been doing their jobs for more years than I was old. You learn to ask people their view of what the problems and the issues and the solutions are rather than pretending that you have them all yourself. An essential part of leadership in a difficult situation is giving the people who know what needs to be done the tools to do it.
Q: What was your most challenging turnaround situation?
A: Every single one of them is unique because of its differences and the potential outcomes. One might have the biggest challenge in just focusing purely on cash flow. Another one might have all kinds of industry issues. Another might have economic cycle issues.
Q: What’s your strategy for dealing with dissident shareholder Robert Burton, who wants to sack the board and take over Cenveo?
A: Just to continue to drive the value of this business. That’s part of what this board wanted me to do. Burton is one of a number of shareholders, and we don’t believe he should be treated any differently than anybody else.
Q: Burton has criticized Cenveo for not doing enough to cut costs. What’s your assessment of what the company has done so far?
A: In the last several weeks the company has moved pretty aggressively, to the tune of around $20 million of cost cutting. It’s my understanding that has been done in a responsible way. I think that cutting costs is a very important element of a turnaround. I’m fairly convinced that those things that we say have been done have in fact been done or will be.
The danger of talking about cuts or running a company on the basis of cuts is that no company has ever cut its way to excellence or to prosperity and growth. The best companies in the world constantly fertilize and prune.
Q: What attracted you to Cenveo?
A: Part of it is the range of issues. The shareholder issue is just one of them. Part of the excitement and the upside of this company is that it’s in an industry that’s in some level of turmoil. Wherever that exists you’ve got tremendous opportunity. Three to five years from now this industry will have shaken itself out. There will be some winners, there will be some that merged and there will be some that no longer exist.
At Cenveo, the challenges are a changing customer base, changing technology, changing margins and a culture made up of 80 different companies all put into one. You’ve got all those dynamics going on at the same time.
Q: What’s the first issue you’ll address?
A: It can’t be done in series. In this situation there need to be parallel activities. They include dealing with the shareholder issue, dealing with our performance issue and dealing with the organizational customer focus that ultimately drives our bottom-line performance.
We’ll develop the strategy of the company around a three-legged stool. The first leg is operational excellence. The second leg is internal or generic growth. The third leg, after the foundation is well laid, then you begin to look back outside to drive the growth and the consolidation opportunity that exists within the industry.
Q: Should Cenveo employees be worried about their jobs?
A: It’s not my history to slash and burn and pillage and plunder, unlike some people in this industry. Any idiot can come in and fire people and lay people off. That takes little or no talent. But I also believe it is important that a company be sized for what it’s doing and sized for success.
Q: What do you do when you’re not working?
A: I love to hunt quail, fish, play golf and play with the grandkids. We’ve also been blessed with a number of friends in other parts of the world.
Q: Where do you call home?
A: I consider Oklahoma and Indiana to be home. All four of our kids were raised in Tulsa.
Edited for space and clarity from an interview by staff writer Greg Griffin.
