As a conservative CEO of a highly leveraged company, my management style was (and is) to be risk averse. As my Vistage chair, Bob continually challenged me to move beyond my comfort zone. We often joked about my resolute refusal to move down the “J” curve of making significant investments in advance of expected returns. Due to Bob’s persistence in reiterating that failure to take risks could result in mediocre performance in a mediocre company, I reluctantly stepped outside my comfort zone and made an investment in the future of our Company. This investment included looking beyond just the actual current financial returns of the Company for our investors, but creating long term value through the creation of a “story”. Our Company has for over 50 years manufactured products for the K-12 education market. We viewed ourselves as a manufacturer. Our customer was our dealer, who in turn sold to schools around the country. Our engagement with our “true” customer ended with the dealer sale, and did not translate through the channel to the end user–the students and teachers who were using our product. Through Bob’s encouragement, we looked beyond our dealer network and began engagement with educators and students. As a result, we expanded our horizon–we created a new branding strategy for our Company, including a new tag line “Transforming Environments, Improving Results”. We made investments into transforming classrooms and getting feedback from students and teachers. We did complete pro-bono transformation of schools. Through the process, we received great feedback as well as national publicity. This year our sales growth is solid double digit growth in a very lousy economy. We are at the end of the seven year cycle of our private equity investors, and we are presently actively engaged in seeking new investors. Stepping outside our comfort zone, albeit taking a slight “J” curve, helped us to create positive sales success while creating a “story” that appears likely to allow us to achieve an above average earnings multiple in the investor sale process. This can be attributed to effective CEO coaching, and continuing to hold me accountable for stepping outside the box
