Editors’ Note: After 50 years leading in three different industries (newspapers, broadcasting and manufacturing) John T. Williams, CEO of Hagerstown, MD-based Jamison Door Company, decided to write down what he’d learned from his experiences to help his adult children make their way in business—and the world.
“They are both wonderful people, successful in their careers,” he explains, “and I thought maybe they would enjoy reading some ideas I had. Decency and good values need to be emphasized often.”
When I read Williams’ letter, I found it plainspoken, moving and profoundly useful, encapsulating the best in what it means to be a business leader, so I asked him if Chief Executive might republish it this holiday season. I hope you get as much out of it as I did—and give it to someone you want to see succeed. — Dan Bigman, Editor
It would be difficult to count all the books written on the subject of management. I found that the ones I have read could generally be summarized in the title of the book, and that it was not really necessary to go to the trouble of reading the entire treatise. One book I read was “Execution (The Discipline of Getting Things Done).” It took the author a couple hundred pages to say that it’s important to actually do what you say you are going to and to take action. So I’m a bit cynical about the value of many business books, especially those written by people who haven’t had to run an organization and dealt with the issues first hand.
The ideas I outline are those which have guided me through the years and which may or may not have value to anyone else. Most of us have to learn from our own experiences, rather than learning from what others have been through. But here goes…
When I went to work with Ernst & Ernst in San Antonio in 1971, I often heard about Walter Beran, a Baylor graduate who had started out years before in that office and had progressed to be in charge of the firm’s Los Angeles office and was on the governing board of E&E. In the early 70’s San Antonio was a sleepy town and not a business hotspot, even in Texas. I had chosen to stay in San Antonio for personal reasons and felt I had probably compromised my career to some degree. Walter Beran was an inspiration of sorts because he had started there but had risen to the top of his profession. I asked people in the office who knew him what made him so good. Was he a technical genius or what? The answer I always received was that while he was certainly technically competent, he just seemed to always surround himself with excellent people. By doing so he always produced good results and so he, himself, always looked good.
The lesson I learned was to try to hire the best and brightest, build a team, and work to facilitate their performing at the highest levels.
Many years later I went with President Jimmy Carter and about 70 others to Guyana to observe their election of a President. Walter Beran happened to be in the group and I got to visit with him for the first time and tell him and of the influence he had been on my career even though we had never previously met. He was most gracious and seemed to appreciate hearing my story.
Larry Franklin rose from being a sharecropper’s son to being president of an NYSE corporation, Harte-Hanks. I worked for him for my four years in the corporate office of Harte-Hanks and then reported directly to him for a period when I was in Dallas. Like all of us he certainly had his shortcomings but he did offer some sage advice along the way. One nugget was that if a person is ambitious and believes in himself, he should always be willing to accept a high risk, high reward position.
High risk necessarily involves the potential for failure as well as success but one can assess the situation and decide if his talents offer a good chance of succeeding. The other part is that one should not take the risk if the reward for doing well is not quite large. This obviously means that a spotlight will shine on one who has succeeded on a very challenging assignment, and the rewards in terms of money and/or advancement will follow.
The single biggest takeaway from my Wharton education came from an off-hand remark by Don Regan. At the time Regan was head of Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith, and he was speaking to our investment banking seminar attended by about 15 students and led by Wharton’s dean, Willis J. Winn. Winn also served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia at the time. Regan later served as Secretary of the Treasury and then as President Reagan’s chief of staff. While I don’t recall the subject, I do remember that he and Dean Winn were talking about some issue that needed to be acted upon. And I remember distinctly Regan’s saying in rather sharp tones, “Let’s get moving on this.” What impressed me was that this man who was at the pinnacle of Wall Street at the time was clearly a man of action and not one who would tolerate studying a problem to death. What I learned was that there is a time to act, to get things done, and to move on solving a problem or taking advantage of an opportunity. His remark that day had a major influence on my business career.
Next page: John shares the two keys to a successful turnaround and why he’s a human chemist.
Being thrown into turnaround situations is both a blessing and a curse. Such a challenge can be both intellectually and emotionally draining, but the rewards can also be quite large. I was often given assignments where the trajectory of the unit’s performance needed a large upward adjustment. The three biggest turnarounds I had were the Bryan-College Station Eagle, Gray Communications, and Jamison Door. The San Angelo Standard Times, Harte Hanks Community Newspapers in Dallas, and Garden State Newspapers also had certain similar characteristics.
My belief is that a successful change in a bad situation requires two basic steps: First, listen to what the regular employees have to say. They generally understand what needs to happen and they want to be heard. Secondly, fire somebody at or near the top who everybody knows needs to be gone but nobody thought the “new guy” would actually take that step. Firing that person does a couple of things. It gets rid of an expensive non-performing person. More importantly, it gives the new person instant credibility as one who has good judgement and who will take action and make necessary, important decisions
One of my favorite people at Harte-Hanks was Jim Lonergan, an eloquent, silver-haired gentlemen who was a most impressive figure. He was publisher of the Wichita Falls Times and Record News. He had a number of sayings, of which this was one. His view was that it is easy to off-load somebody but that it took a skilled manager to save people and get them to significantly improve their performance.
Obviously some workers are simply incapable of performing at the required level. But some people can be led, coached, and encouraged to raise their game. Most people want to do well, but some need some special attention in the form of training, more specific guidance and letting them know we believe in them. Jim’s view was that saving an employee was far more difficult than just firing them, but the rewards were worth the extra time and effort required.
When living in Bryan-College Station, Texas, as publisher of the local paper I was invited to tour the state prison in Huntsville, about 30 miles away, by W.J. Estelle, the head of the Texas Department of Corrections. Mr. Estelle was one of the two most charismatic people I ever met. His prison housed some of the most dangerous felons. For example, not long before our visit a prisoner had taken hostages and ended up killing one or more in his escape attempt. Mr. Estelle had a high profile in the state at the time and was considered a tough but fair corrections officer. On our tour he frequently stopped to visit with inmates and seemed to enjoy a mutual respect with them. In the course of the day I asked him how he saw his job.
His reply was that he was just a human chemist, trying to put the right people in the right situations so they could function competently and effectively together as a team to run a model prison system. Although a subsequent federal lawsuit by an inmate precipitated a federal judge’s essentially fundamentally changing the way the system was run and caused the departure of Mr. Estelle, his understanding of his role has always been an important one to me.
“Maybe I made your ad too goddamn big!” This was another Jim Lonergan statement. Newspaper advertisers would occasionally say their ads didn’t work and blame the newspaper. Ad sales people could be stymied and not know how to respond. Jim’s answer was the phrase above and he would cite a one inch by one column ad that ran in newspapers nationwide for years that simply said: “Feet Hurt?” and then sold a salve that helped relieve pain. The ad had been successful because it communicated a simple message briefly and effectively to people who had foot discomfort.
So Jim would verbally confront a complaining advertiser with that statement and say his newspaper wasn’t on trial here because he knew it worked. It could sell houses and cars and bicycles and fill jobs every day. He then worked with the advertiser to look at the items in his ad and their prices, the layout of the ad, the store hours, and the whole marketing and sales strategy of the merchant. The next step was to design an ad that would be effective in communicating the appeal and benefits of the items being marketed. The ad sales people became consultants to the businesses they served.
Jim’s approach can be used in many situations. Jamison Door sales people often hear that our doors are too expensive. In those cases when we can fully understand the client’s needs, we can frequently overcome that objection because initial cost is a small part of the total cost of owning and operating a door. When the total cost to own a door over its life is calculated including repair and maintenance, energy costs, downtime costs and other operational expenses, Jamison doors are quite inexpensive. Most of our competitors sell only one type of door. The old saying that when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail applies here. Because we have a line of doors we can suggest whatever product makes the most sense for the customer. Our most effective folks become consultants rather than just sales people.
Another Jim Lonergan story told about the two furniture stores that were across the street from each other. When Store A would put up banners on his store announcing a sale on outdoor furniture, Store B would quickly respond with a similar promotion. Time would pass and Store A would have a sale on floor lamps which Store B would match. Then Store A would promote couches and Store B would respond in kind. And on and on it went. It wasn’t long before Store B went out of business.
Store B’s owner, once he had padlocked his business, walked across the street despondent and asked the owner “What did I do wrong? Every time you had a sale, I matched it. Yet you are prospering and I’m out of business. What did I do wrong?” The owner of Store A said “It’s really pretty simple. We had two people watching my store and you had nobody watching yours.” The moral is obvious: each organization must certainly be mindful of the competition but must have its own strategy and implement it well if it is to be successful.
At Jamison we are knowledgeable about our competition and our long term strategy recognizes how we fit in our industry and can take advantage of the weaknesses of others. We have had two competitors try to copy some or all of our business plan and both have failed to be successful doing so.
Next page: Why businesses must choose suppliers of all types and the power of an unconventional answer.
Many human interactions involve problem solving in some form. The higher the degree of potential for real conflict the more important it is to agree on what the goal is. Often in a contentious exchange people will have different goals making agreement far more difficult. Political players excel at this because their goal is frequently to win an election or embarrass the other guy rather than solve a problem. If people can agree on the goals at the outset of any discussion, obtaining resolution will be easier.
There’s not room for me to list all the mistakes I’ve made along the way but several relate to this topic. Upon arrival at Jamison I attempted to establish a relationship with the company’s long term banker but didn’t develop a backup banking relationship. When we were negotiating to buy HCR, the air door company, I provided the banker with every bit of information I had about that company and he seemed both satisfied and impressed. I went over the terms of our proposed purchase agreement with him. He assured me there was no problem with their financing the deal.
However, 12 days before the expiration of our purchase agreement he told me his bank couldn’t do the deal after all. Matt Wyskiel, my son-in-law and major Jamison stockholder, who was still working at the Mercantile Bank at the time, put me in touch with their affiliate bank in Hagerstown, who ended up financing the transaction. The lesson to be learned is have a relationship with more than one bank and keep all informed on a regular basis.
At Gray we lacked a good litigator for an attorney so we suffered on several occasions because of that. At Jamison, before Boyce Martin agreed to become our general counsel, we lacked an attorney who had the combination of common sense, good judgment, a good understanding of the law and an emotional involvement with the company. Boyce was a member of the Jamison family, a major stockholder and an excellent attorney who has been invaluable.
Also at Jamison, we initially were held up by a workers compensation insurance company that changed their quote at literally the eleventh hour. We now have a great relationship with an agent who cares about our company, does an excellent job of getting competitive quotes and even comes to our monthly safety committee meetings.
A person who has been uniquely important to me over many years starting at Harte-Hanks is Bill Schneider, a corporate psychologist and author of books about the importance of corporate cultures. Bill has been involved in almost every important hire I’ve made during and after my time with Harte-Hanks. He has a special gift to be able to predict whether a person will succeed or fail in a particular role. I can’t recall a single time he’s been wrong.
During the four years I worked in the Harte-Hanks corporate office, the atmosphere was electric. The company was in a growth mode, and under President Bob Marbut’s leadership there was a clear vision of where we wanted to go. Bob had periodic meetings of the Planning Task Group, a combination of key corporate staff and operating group presidents. He would bring in speakers on a variety of topics in an attempt to stretch our thinking. One speaker, whose name I don’t recall, had been chief planner at both Xerox and IBM. His simple, but important, message was look for clues about the future and plan accordingly. What is happening today that will impact your people, company, industry, and country tomorrow? His statement is analogous to Wayne Gretzky’s admonition to look at where the puck is going to be, not where it is.
An example of this idea is CNN, which was launched June 1, 1980. I remember thinking at the time that I just didn’t see how a 24 hours newscast could be successful. A few years later [my wife] Carol and I were at a small dinner party at Atlanta developer Tom Cousins’ plantation house near Albany. Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then newlyweds, were there.
I asked Turner how he had the idea for CNN and what made him think it would be successful. With a wave of the hand he answered brusquely, saying, “Oh, I knew it would be successful. I was just afraid that ABC, NBC, or CBS would do it first.” I remember thinking what incredible vision he had to see what others didn’t and to act so decisively on his instincts.
Leaders of organizations have to look for clues, and keep their headlights on bright. Just as doing today’s jobs well is important, so is positioning a company or organization for the future.
The name given to a product often determines its success or failure. Part of the reason given for the Edsel’s inability to survive was that its name was awful.
When Harte-Hanks bought the newspapers in the Dallas suburbs there were six different titles, making promotion of the group very difficult. Because we really didn’t have a good understanding of the loyalty, if any, of a particular community to its newspaper we were hesitant to change the names of the papers. One long night several of us spent a few hours trying to find one name that maybe we could use for all the papers. We found that we were precluded from most common newspaper names because competitors in one or more markets always spoiled our opportunities. We ended up not changing the names but doing all group promotion under the banner of Harte-Hanks Community Newspapers.
Many, many times I have regretted that decision because one of the names proposed was Champion. So we would have had the Plano Champion, Mesquite Champion, Lewisville Champion, Allen Champion etc. The promotion possibilities were endless: “Your Community has a Champion!” Even though that name was suggested we felt like it was not a typical-enough newspaper name. Nobody had ever named a newspaper Champion before so let’s just stick with what we’ve got. Really bad call! And largely because we would have been the first to use an untraditional name, we failed to see what a great job we could have done promoting a group of Champion newspapers.
Next page: The business lessons of Gene Mauch, former baseball player and manager.
Gene Mauch was a professional baseball player and manager. But he was best known for managing four teams from 1960 to 1987 and was the winningest manager never to have won a league pennant. One of the teams he managed was the Philadelphia Phillies, and in 1964 his Phillies had a 6 ½ game lead in the National League with 12 games left to play and were starting a 7 game homestand. The Phillies faded, losing 10 games in a row to finish tied for second place.
When I was in graduate school at Wharton in 1967, I remember well going into a bar near the old ballpark in Philadelphia and seeing unused 1964 World Series tickets framed on the wall, obviously a painful reminder of how the team folded in the end. I’ve wondered many times the thought process of the teams that ended up hiring Mauch after the collapse in Philadelphia. I suspect the discussion went something like, “Let’s hire old Gene. He knows baseball and knows how to manage a ball club. I know he never won a pennant but old Gene has come real close.” Not much thought was given to looking for someone with a great skill set who hadn’t yet had a chance to manage a major league team.
I always felt like I was pretty good at running an organization when given the job but I wasn’t that good at getting the big jobs, often because I hadn’t run a bigger newspaper. The jobs went to the equivalent of the Gene Mauch’s of the world who had worked at bigger papers. They hadn’t necessarily done very well there, but they had worked at the bigger papers and I hadn’t.
Probably the main reason I was given the [CEO] job at Gray Communications and at Jamison Door was because both situations were desperate and nobody else wanted the jobs. When I went to Gray I never had run a public company with TV stations, newspapers, a car rental agency and fixed base operation (FBO) but I had other skills that let me be reasonably successful. I never knew anything about doors when I went to Jamison but I knew the importance of finding good people and building a team who could take the company to a much higher plane.
I believe I was successful both at Gray and Jamison even though I had not previously run identical companies. The message is to take a fresh look at how one fills key positions and make a judgement about what skill set is required for a person to be successful. It may not be necessary to have previously done the exact same job.
When people apply for a job they are really making themselves vulnerable in many ways. It is important to let them know you appreciate their offering themselves for consideration and have an interest in your organization. Always treat them with great respect and seek to understand how they and the organization might fit. If you tell them you will get back with them by a certain time, then do it. That is just being thoughtful.
When I was being considered for the publisher’s job at the Dallas Times Herald they were in a struggle for their life against the increasingly dominant Dallas Morning News. The owner, Times Mirror Corporation, had previously made two bad choices for publisher and needed to get this one right. After our first meeting at a newspaper convention in Miami they told me they would be calling me the next week to set up a visit to the paper in Dallas. The call actually came about three weeks later. There were several other instances after that when a promised call never came. When they finally made a decision to hire someone else I heard about it from others days before I got a call from anyone at Times Mirror. All this was from a company with Picassos hanging in their corporate dining room, elegant tastes, great conversation, a most prestigious company with a sterling reputation. After that experience I vowed to treat applicants like customers.
So often in our personal interactions and in public discourse we talk at or past each other. Listening to what another person is saying and seeking to process that info is done all too infrequently. Good reporters develop the skill to ask questions during an interview to allow them to understand what one is saying and thinking.
Often when we disagree with another person we either avoid a discussion or we seek to convince the other of the wisdom of our viewpoint. A better approach would be to learn to listen and seek to understand the points the other person is trying to make. One trick is to relax your tongue when listening rather than always thinking about what you are going to say in response. The practice of talking at each other is particularly irritating in today’s media, both print and broadcast. With a 24 hour news cycle the emphasis is on the moment rather than putting events in perspective or focusing on the long term implications of the day’s events. Usually on any given channel people are pontificating and obfuscating rather than enlightening.
In discussions in business where alternatives are being considered, actually listening to various viewpoints and discussing the pros and cons will almost always lead to superior decisions.
On a personal level wife Carol is a master of getting others to talk. It can be a game to keep asking people about themselves and having them talk. Typically at the end of such an encounter people will leave thinking she is such an interesting person to talk to, since the whole conversation was about themselves.
Next page: Not shrinking from ethical decisions and why John’s dad didn’t just want a gold watch.
My mother’s mother insisted I read Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” a poem about the beauty of Americans of all skills working, each crafting his own products and using his God-given skills. It implicitly glorifies the fact that each person‘s skill set is important and that we can all use our unique talents to build great things together. Mutual respect among people at all levels of an organization is essential to a good, decent, and ethical organization.
A corollary suggestion I heard years ago at a speech in Atlanta was treat employees like they are volunteers. Volunteers do jobs because they want to and believe they are doing something meaningful with their work. It doesn’t take much to discourage a volunteer or make them want to go somewhere they are appreciated. Same goes for employees.
The Optimist Clubs in San Angelo sponsored the Little Olympics, a competition for elementary school students. Events included broad jumping and races of various lengths. Since I wasn’t good at any of those I asked the volunteer coach, Lee Gregg, if I could just help him in some way. One day after practice he said there’s one kid here that will be the best at whatever he chooses to do in life and that kid is you. Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before or shown that they really believed in me. What he said that day always stuck with me and helped me believe in myself.
Every day we have the opportunity to compliment people, tell them we admire some skill they have or some attribute they possess. We can give people reason to see their potential even if they don’t see it in themselves. With a few words or a smile we can brighten people’s days and words of encouragement can change lives. And words cost nothing.
We should all seek to do what is right. While occasionally not clear, often right and wrong actions are obvious. Newspapers and broadcast stations have more than their share of ethical decisions because of the pervasive influence of what they print and broadcast and for how they program the content of what they air. In addition to the obvious issues of how the media uses its influence and the bias of most, there are enormous pressures to publish or not publish many stories and the prominence of how they are played.
Simple examples which have confronted just about every newspaper publisher are stories some large advertiser wants kept out of the paper. As a struggling suburban paper in Plano we published a story about the raging theft of T-tops from a certain brand of sports cars. The dealer who sold that brand never ran another ad after that story came out. We did what was right, but we paid a real price. In Bryan-College Station we sued Texas A&M under the Texas Open Records Act to get the names of the candidates for the school’s president. The law was pretty clear that that was public information, but A&M didn’t care what the law said. We sued – and won – and antagonized a large number of rabid Aggies.
When a large plant of a major company was considering locating in College Station there was a controversy over the zoning. The company would not identify itself and would not specify exactly what it was going to make at its proposed location, which was adjacent to an upscale residential neighborhood. We chose to report accurately and extensively on the events with the full understanding that the company could possibly be discouraged from locating there because of the adverse publicity. We believed the right thing to do was to hold a mirror up to the events and report regardless of the outcome. Later I learned that had the company chosen not to come, a delegation of prominent community leaders would have gone to San Antonio to try to get me fired.
Henrik Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” is the ultimate piece of literature detailing the kind of conflict faced daily by the media. His story tells of the man who determined that the mineral baths in this resort town were toxic. He thought he would be a hero for revealing this and saving lives, but he was instead determined to be an enemy of the people for destroying the economic base of the community.
Daddy was not a very introspective man. He abhorred the theoretical and insisted on the practical. Life was pretty black and white, right or wrong. He was the most moral and ethical person I ever met. If he brought home a pencil from work, he would have put a nickel in the petty cash box before he left. Counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists were all unnecessary in his way of thinking because if we just listened to and helped each other one on one, those types wouldn’t have a role to play.
But one day he made a comment that I have long remembered. He said when he retired he didn’t just want a gold watch. He wanted to be able say his life counted for something more important. I never heard him say anything similar again as long as he lived. The message of that one remark was burned into my soul. One’s life needs to count for something and money isn’t the only scorecard.
Those were the simple words my mother wrote in my first Bible after I had walked down the aisle and accepted Christ at the age of 7 at the First Baptist Church in San Angelo. There’s a lot of advice a parent can give a child but none more important than that. I think often of what the world would be like of all of us followed Jesus’s teachings and treated each other with caring, respect and compassion. Comforting is the fact that Jesus surrounded himself with sinners and preached forgiveness. His teachings help us understand what is important in life and to put events in perspective. “What profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”
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