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Leadership and Management

What Do ‘Certain’ Leaders Know?

BY JOHN MCQUEARY

AICC Emerging Leader Contribution

How do you lead with certainty when everything around you is so uncertain and seems to be changing daily? In my experience, it is by admitting that you are certain that you do not know everything. Mark Twain is often credited with a famous quote that goes something like this: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

If I were a politician, I would probably never win an election, as I would freely admit I do not know all the answers. While that might be bad politics, in my experience it is the ideal management style.

As a leader, I am of course expected to know the answers to most of my team’s questions, but I do not pretend to know everything. With changes in the economy, supply chain disruptions, and the general uncertainty in many areas of the current business climate, I choose to admit I have my share of uncertainties. However, I am certain that we’ll find a way to get through it. That is what I tell my team. When I am asked how potential lockdowns or visitor restrictions at client facilities might disrupt our business model, I confidently reply that I do not know for sure, but I know we have been through worse before and will adapt as necessary.

I often think of good managers as I do of good sports coaches. The best coaches have played the game before, do not act better than their players, and would never ask them to do something they have not done or could not do themselves. While the coaching concept of management is certainly not new, I believe it has become especially important in the last couple of years due to the dramatic changes in people’s work and personal lives with the COVID-19 pandemic. I think highly of a Little League coach my son had one year. The coach would pull my son aside after practice to check in when he was clearly having an off day. That kind of insight and display of genuine care helped my son play better baseball. It does the same thing with employees.

My team is made up primarily of salespeople, and salespeople, like many of us, are notoriously susceptible to making emotional decisions. Not all, but many will get in a “slump” due to a bad couple of meetings or a negative situation at home, and that negativity can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if not addressed. Knowing your employees’ individual personalities and being able to pull them aside for a chat and some encouragement can make a big difference.

I have read countless articles in business publications or in major news outlets about the “change in management style” that managers had to employ as a result of employees working remotely or juggling new challenges in their personal lives. As I read of leaders having to learn to “check in” and “open new doors for communication” for their employees, I could not help but smirk. I thought to myself, “If these managers were not taking time to check in with their employees and build a culture of open communication, what were they even doing before?”

When honest and open communication is standard, formal check-ins are often redundant. My team knows they can come to me with anything, business or personal, and I will show them respect, listen, and offer suggestions, encouragement, or direction when needed. I believe this builds natural trust. When you couple that trust with a generally positive outlook, then your team will know that even when you do not know all the answers, you are making decisions with them in mind and leading for the good of the company. My fellow leaders: You can have confidence that you don’t have to know everything, as long as you know your people.

John McQueary is national sales manager at CST Systems. He can be reached at john@ cstsystems.net.

Thought Leadership

Redesign Your Expectations

BY SARAH MOZINGO

AICC Emerging Leader Contribution

As we entered 2022, I sat down and gathered my thoughts on the new year and listed my goals and resolutions. With new projects, ideas, and significant dates on the horizon, I was—and still am—hopeful for a successful year. What I didn’t expect to enter, however, was yet another unprecedented year.

While “unprecedented” might be the most overworked word of the past two years, it fully applies to what we have been experiencing in the corrugated industry. In the past, we could get board overnight, tooling in just a few days. Pallets, glue, ink, and other supplies were easy to come by and were affordable. Though many of us were busy, it wasn’t uncommon to be able to easily squeeze a hot order into the scheduling lineup. This was our everyday life, and we grew to expect these types of processes and lead times.

Now, it takes two to three weeks just to get board. The lumber shortage made it nearly impossible to get pallets, and worldwide supply chain issues clogged our means of purchasing other important supplies such as adhesives and machine parts. The use of e-commerce skyrocketed, and with the demand for corrugated products at an all-time high and supplies at record-setting lows, we were—and still are—faced with unprecedented circumstances. This is something we never expected. It is stressful, frustrating, and at times frightening. But for reasons beyond me, we continually apply our expectations of years past to today’s problems. This won’t work anymore.

We are all guilty of setting unrealistic expectations for ourselves and others. But unrealistic expectations, when unmet, can lead to fear and unrest. We wonder why something happened and what could have been done differently, and we waste too much valuable time and energy thinking of how to solve the problem when the solution is simple. While some expectations of others should be upheld, such as punctuality, open communication, and honesty, abolishing unrealistic expectations leads to inner peace and strengthened relationships. Below are three simple ways to redesign your expectations as we move forward in 2022.

1. Move toward empathy. Remember that when an expectation you create is not met by someone, there is likely a good reason (i.e., this person has something going on, personal or professional, that caused them to be unable to accomplish what you subconsciously thought they could). Take this as an opportunity to set aside your ego and reflect on the fact that we are all struggling with something. 2.Have flexibility. Expectations cannot stay the same year after year in the ever-changing landscape of life.

When an expectation of yourself or others no longer serves your lifestyle or experiences, adjust accordingly. We must allow ourselves and others the grace to change and adapt. 3.Release resentment. It can be painful when an expectation goes unmet, no matter how large or small. Harboring resentment and disappointment, however, never leads to personal growth. Recognize when you have an emotional reaction to an unmet need, then let go and forgive.

In early January, I learned that a close contact at a customer of mine had suddenly passed away due to a heart attack. As shocking as this news was, it reminded me that our time here is limited. It forced me to remember that we are all just people trying to make a go at it and that, generally speaking, we are all doing our best, whatever that may look like. If letting go of our unrealistic expectations of one another truly does lead to peace and strengthened relationships, I recommend letting go now.

Sarah Mozingo is marketing coordinator at Complete Design & Packaging. She can be reached at smozingo@ completedesign packaging.com.

Weber Display & Packaging: A Storied Past, A Determined Future

BY STEVE YOUNG

Photo courtesy of Weber Display & Packaging.

The Weber families, from left: Bob Doherty, executive vice president of sales; Keira Zambon Bergvall, accounting manger; Kevin Doherty, sales manager; Jim Zambon, chief financial officer; and Jim Doherty III, president and CEO. Not pictured: J. Ryan Zambon, general manager, co-packing division, and process manager. COMPANY: Weber Display & Packaging

ESTABLISHED: 1893

JOINED AICC: 1992

PHONE: 215-426-3500

WEBSITE:

www.weberdisplay-pkg.com

LOCATIONS:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

OWNERS: Jim Doherty III

The roots of Weber Display & Packaging grow deep into the fertile industrial history of the city of Philadelphia. Founded by the entrepreneur David Weber in 1893 at the corner of Fifth and Locust Streets, the company fi rst made wooden boxes. Later, in a partnership with machine manufacturer Samuel Langston, Weber developed the fi rst single-facer to produce single-faced corrugated paper, primarily for the men’s hat industry, which was prominent in the Northeast at the time. “Our fi rst product was for a company called Stetson Hats,” says Bob Doherty, executive vice president of sales for Weber. “Every man wore a hat back in the day, and our company produced the single-face wrap that protected the hats in shipment.”

Expanding with the Philadelphia industrial landscape, in 1925, Weber built a 110,000-square-foot plant at the corner of Richmond and Tioga Streets in the northeast quadrant of the city. “David Weber started making corrugated boxes here and developed a number of diff erent patents all around the world for single facing. He built the business from there,” Doherty says. “It’s certainly a great story about a company that has been in one industry and one location since the late 1800s.”

Th e David Weber Co. was considered “a very high-quality” manufacturer of corrugated boxes. Weber served a 100mile radius in and around Philadelphia, including the produce and seafood industries of southern New Jersey. It was, in some way, shape, or form, run by members of the Weber family until the 1950s, when the family sold portions of it to Chesapeake Corp. and Interstate Container Co. Chesapeake later bought out Interstate’s shares and became the sole owner of the plant, and it remained in Chesapeake’s control and operated under the Chesapeake name until 1991. It was during these Chesapeake years that the Doherty brothers, Bob and the late Jim Doherty Jr., were involved—Bob as sales

manager and his brother, Jim, as an independent broker.

As Bob tells the story, Chesapeake had made the decision in the late 1980s to close the plant. Th e company had faced a prolonged labor strike, and the basic infrastructure of the plant was beginning to wear. Jim was brokering a lot of business for the plant, and out of concern for the company’s employees and customers, he attempted to delay Chesapeake’s decision. “At the time, Jim thought that we could help employees get other jobs, get customers resituated,” Bob recalls. “But in the end, the conversation started fl owing toward, ‘Are you interested in selling?’”

After what Bob calls three to four weeks of “Wharton [Business] Schoolstyle” negotiations, Jim assumed ownership of the plant in January 1991 and began operations on August 1 of that same year.

Today, Weber Display & Packaging is a $95 million company, employing 190 people on three shifts, and last year producing 720 million square feet of board out of its four facilities in the Philadelphia area: its main 110,000-square-foot plant on Richmond Street; an 80,000-square-foot co-packing facility; a 67,000-square-foot just-in-time warehouse; and a recently opened 30,000-square-foot printing, die-cutting, and fi nishing site on nearby Ontario Street. Weber also owns a small semipermanent display division to serve its point-of-purchase customers who frequently require permanent fi xtures in their product merchandising.

It’s All in the Name

Jim Doherty III, the son of Jim Doherty Jr. and now the president and CEO of the company, remembered that his father, when buying the company, wanted to keep the name Chesapeake Display and Packaging, but the sellers refused. “So my father went back and said, ‘Well, if I can’t have that, I want the David Weber name back,’ and they agreed,” he says.

Th e Weber name, says Bob Doherty, had a longstanding reputation in the Philadelphia market, and the new owners of the company recognized the value it had with the customer base. “People called it ‘Weber’ when it was Chesapeake,” he says. “Th ey could not get that name out of their heads.

“We took advantage of that,” he adds. “We went out to tell the customers, ‘We’re going to be here; nothing is changing; we have the same equipment; give us a chance.’”

Th e driving force in the newly established business, however, was Jim Doherty Jr. himself. Bob recalls, “Jim was very inspirational on the plant fl oor—very inspirational. He got everybody behind him and behind us. He really came across that he was just a Philly guy like all of them—a young guy that grew up in Philadelphia, moved to South Jersey. ‘I have a family just like you guys; this is my money; I need all of you to pull on the rope in the same direction.’ And they did.”

A Solid Family Foundation

Th e founders of modern-day Weber Display & Packaging found value in restoring a recognized name and the appeal of working in a family-run organization; the next generation is building on this tradition. Jim III joined his father in the business in 1992. He had his own successful career in residential real estate, and he was reluctant to come into the family business in part, he says, because he felt his father’s personal sales relationships were unique to him and wouldn’t guarantee future success.

“I told my father, ‘You’re a broker, and all the relationships are with you. If something happened to you, it doesn’t automatically mean that all the business is going to go forward with me.’ So I did not see a bright future there,” Jim III says. In time, however, Doherty made the decision to come into the business, reasoning, “If I’m going to jump off the cliff , I want to do it now and not 20 years from now.”

Jim III says he started in sales to “get his feet wet,” and jokes that “I was on probation after six months due to lack of sales, so they had to move me to production.” Eventually, though, Jim III settled into key roles of purchasing roll stock and converting equipment, responsibilities which he still carries in his role as CEO.

Kevin Doherty, sales manager, is the son of Bob Doherty and thus succeeds his father in that role. Kevin is a relative newcomer to the Weber team, joining a mere nine years ago following a successful career at Lockheed-Martin. Says Kevin of his transition into the business: “At Lockheed-Martin, I was one of 130,000 people. Even if I did a good job, I felt as though I were irrelevant. When I looked at what was happening at Weber, I could see that the business was growing. I didn’t really expect to get into it, but I could see it was growing. It is very motivating to be part of the group that controls it.”

Jim Zambon is the brother-in-law of Jim III, having married his sister Barbara Doherty Zambon. Zambon also began his career at Weber early on—in 1992— moving from Indiana, where he was a regional manager of a small pharmacy chain. “Th e company’s fi rst accountant didn’t last very long, and Weber needed one,” he says. “Jim Doherty asked me if I was interested in coming aboard.”

Keeping things in the family and family relationships are important to Zambon. His son, J. Ryan Zambon, is the general manager of the company’s packout division and Weber’s process manager. His daughter Keira Zambon Bergvall is now the accounting manager.

Ryan Zambon joined the company in 2012 following the start of his career in management consulting. “I went to undergraduate school for operations and information management and

“I think that our success is unique in what we’ve been able to offer the marketplace. There will always be a place for value and service.

—J. Ryan Zambon, general manager, co-packing division, and process manager, Weber Display & Packaging

worked for Deloitte & Touche,” he says of his career prior to Weber. “I grew up around the family business and worked in the office and on the plant floor over the years on summer breaks and holidays. When the business eventually needed some help in IT, I saw an opportunity to try to take what I had learned inside and outside of Weber to help improve the family business.”

Zambon Bergvall, for her part, started in 2015. After graduating from Villanova in 2014, she became a CPA and worked for the accounting firm KPMG. When Weber’s accounting manager announced her retirement, Chief Financial Officer Jim Zambon asked Keira if she wanted to become a part of the business. “Of course, I said ‘yes!’” she recalls.

Other key players on the Weber management team include David de la Rosa, vice president of operations. A 40-year veteran of the corrugated industry, de la Rosa joined Weber in 2003 following a long career in production supervision and management with Owens-Illinois, Packaging Corp. of America, and Southern Container.

‘Design Through Delivery’

How does a 129-year-old company continue to be successful year after year, generation after generation? “Our mission statement is ‘design through delivery,’” says Kevin Doherty. “Our best accounts are the ones who use us for all our strengths.” Those “strengths,” he says, are a 15-person sales force, a dedicated team of graphic designers, a co-packing facility, a permanent display division, and a mix of equipment that can satisfy the needs of its diverse mix of food and beverage, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial customers.

“I don’t think it’s all that common— even among AICC members—for a company to be able to cover such a broad waterfront,” he says. “You’re either making brown boxes, or you’re making displays; you’re buying sheets, or you’re making board; you’re involved in co-packing, or you don’t touch it.”

Jim III adds, “It goes back to my father’s mantra: He didn’t care if it was a 50-lot or a 10,000-lot. As long as he could serve the customer, he was going to do it. I think that’s pretty much our philosophy; we do that to this day. We are definitely a sales-driven company.”

An independent corrugator plant, Weber has a 98” Corrugator—a BHS wet end with a Fosber dry end—that produces, B, C, and E flutes, as well BC and EB double-wall. The company has a strong affiliation with and affinity for Bobst and Marquip Ward United (now BWPaperSystems) converting and finishing equipment. The company’s workhorse printing machines are a six-color Bobst DRO rotary die cutter and a six-color MarquipWardUnited rotary die cutter. Rounding out its flexo printing capability are two Bobst flexo folder gluers—a four-color 1228 50” and a three-color 618 Mini Martin—and a two-color Bobst ExpertCut flatbed die cutter. A Stock label laminator, a Bobst MasterCut flatbed die cutter, and a Bobst MasterFold specialty folder-gluer complete the list of current equipment.

Weber’s capital investment strategy is driven by its “design through delivery” philosophy. Bob Doherty credits Weber’s printing excellence today to its competition early on, namely Triangle Container, now Menasha, also in Philadelphia. “We had Triangle around the corner, and its owner, Jack Grollman, and they were printing the Mona Lisa directly on corrugated,” he says, referring to the industry’s flexographic printing innovation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “I wanted to be that. I felt that was the direction we needed to go. In the end we wanted to be everything to everybody, and that was a challenge.”

So, how does a company excel at producing such diverse and demanding product mix? “You pay some tuition along the way,” says Kevin Doherty. “You learn through stubbing your toe from time to time, but if you have good people and good processes, you find a way.”

Process management and automation are key, says Ryan Zambon. “I think that our success is unique in what we’ve been able to offer the marketplace. There will always be a place for value and service. Doing so in the confines of efficient manufacturing will continue to be the challenge,” he says, adding, “Whether it’s through automation, technology, or better processes, that’s going to be what Weber will hang its hat on in the future.”

Keira Zambon Bergvall agrees, saying, “The ownership of the company has to continue its capital investment, making sure we have the equipment to make things more efficient.”

‘Relationships Are Key’

It sounds trite to say, but like any independent in the corrugated or paperboard packaging business, Weber believes relationships are key to success. As noted earlier, the company’s founders had two principal goals in acquiring