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THE PERFECT SPOT FOR YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP TEAM RETREAT OR PERSONAL GETAWAY IS RIGHT HERE IN THE HEART OF TEXAS Nestled on 150 acres just 30 minutes east of the Austin airport, this one-of-a kind ranch facilitates the ultimate executive retreat. With 15 bedroom suites your group will enjoy immersion in nature without sacrificing any modern comforts. Miles of wooded trails span around majestic, oversized pines, lush fields, coastal and native grasses, and wildflowers along with two fishing ponds stocked with sunfish and largemouth bass. Spectacular amenities include a 9-hole putting green, golf simulator, pickleball court, 1,000-square-foot conference room and more. A true Texas getaway awaits. AMENITIES: • High-definition TVs and work desks in each room • Dedicated home theater • Commercial hi-speed Internet with WiFi • Courtyard with pool, hot tub, and outdoor kitchen • Pickleball court • Chargepoint electric vehicle station • Eight electric bikes included • Running stream with meditation area • Golf facilities, including large artificial putting green, driving range, and golf simulator • Three-hole frisbee golf course • Catch-and-release fishing—fishing gear provided • Additional concierge services available on request 15 bedrooms | 15.5 baths | 1,000 sf conference room | pool & heated spa Book Your Stay! Call: 512-412-3127 Email: texasceoranch@gmail.com In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have implemented heightened safety and housekeeping procedures.
FEATURES 30 EMPLOYEE-APPROVED CEOs Texas CEO Magazine partnered with Comparably to find out which Texas CEOs are tops when it comes to employee approval. Find out who made the list. 91 LEADERSHIPELEVATED Close the gaps in leadership effectiveness with leader standard work. 78 THINKINGENTREPRENEURIALMADEEASY Discover the special characteristics that make entrepreneurs different. Q3 2022 5Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
dba Texas CEO Magazine 8012 Bee Caves Road Austin, TX 78746 Publisher Donna Bragg Editor-in-Chief Rebecca French Smith Contributing Editor Aaron Hierholzer Operations Tamara Trammell Graphic Design Michele Rodriguez Ubisep Design Contributors Craig Casselberry Gordon Daugherty Gary Hoover Karen Martin M. Ray Perryman Joel Trammell Q3 2022 8 LETTER FROM THE OWNER Joel Trammell 12 EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN THETEXAS—INCLUDINGBUDGET Craig Casselberry 17 CEO READING LIST 6 new & upcoming business books. 18 TEXAS CEOs ON THE MOVE New CEO appointments across the state. 22 28 TEXAS INDICATORSECONOMIC Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas 56 REIMAGINING WORKPLACEPARENT-FRIENDLYTHE M. Ray Perryman NEW GROWTH Predictable revenue growth is one of the holy grails of the startup world. Recent headquarters relocations to the Lone Star state.
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INSIDE 6 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 © 2022 The American CEO, LLC dba Texas CEO Magazine. All rights reserved. The Content in this issue may not be reproduced, distributed, or otherwise used without the prior written consent of the American CEO, LLC. The various contributors own their respective Content that is published in this magazine.
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The Perryman Group provides the economic insights you need for the board room, the courtroom, the hearing room, or any other room where decisions are made.
Dr. Ray Perryman, President and CEO, has more than 40 years of experience in developing systems, analyzing complex problems, and communicating effectively.
We help clients analyze and communicate complex information in common-sense terms through comprehensive, objective analyses and clear, concise expert reports and presentations. Economic Data We have published annual economic forecasts for almost 40 years and maintain a comprehensive set of national and regional models.
Joel Trammell Owner Texas CEO Magazine more about Joel and the rest of the team online at TexasCEOMagazine.com/about
8 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
Thanks to the Internet, it is now possible to get near real-time data on how employees and customers are reacting to a given leader. Several firms have built sophisticated platforms to collect this data, but I find that many organizations fail to leverage this information to continuously improve their business. For example, internal financial metrics are often viewed as far more important than customer satisfaction or employee engagement. I think this is a mistake. In this issue we highlight some of the best largecompany CEOs in Texas, rated not by financial performance but by the people who know best: the employees of the organization. Drawing from a platform that collects company culture data, we feature some of the CEOs in our state who have the approval of the great majority of their employees. Check out page 30 to see who made the list. As CEO, if you are not including this kind of data about customers and employees in your regular decision making, you will have trouble building a sustainable organization in the long term.
I have long argued that building a sustainable organization requires the CEO to constantly balance the needs of three groups: employees, customers, andTheshareholders.problemfor many CEOs is that they get far more data about how they are doing with shareholders than with customers or employees. I think it is critical for CEOs to seek out information about customers and employees, just as thoroughly as they prepare GAAP financials for their shareholders.
Also in this issue, we recognize some of the organizations that have gone out of their way to support working parents. We also have business historian Gary Hoover’s thoughts on the magic of entrepreneurial thinking, author and TKMG founder Karen Martin on how to scale leadership practices across the organization, startup advisor and investor Gordon Daugherty on launching growth engines—and much more. Do you have thoughts on what you’d like to see in our pages or on TexasCEOMagazine.com in the future? You can contact us anytime at info@texasceomagazine.com.
Letter from the OWNER Learn
CONTROLS:
• If a load is too heavy, break it into smaller loads, ask a coworker to help or use dollies, carts and other lift aids.
• Set up restricted areas to keep employees away from hot areas on production equipment whenever possible.
HAZARD: NOISE Hearing loss is the most common work-related injury in the US. Workers in the manufacturing industry are at risk because they spend long days sharing workspace with loud machines. The bad news is that once you’ve lost your hearing, you can’t get it back. The good news is that hearing loss is 100 percent preventable.
PROMOTION
WHAT ARE YOUR ORGAN
• Use safe lifting techniques such as lifting with your legs instead of your back, keeping the load in your power zone and pivoting with your feet instead of twisting with your body when you need to turn.
• Use tongs to handle hot objects.
CONTROLS:
SAFETYWORKPLACEGUIDE:
• Implement a hearing conservation program when required by OSHA. Manufacturing is a key spoke in the wheels that drive the Texas economy. In 2020, Texas manufacturers exported $203 billion in goods, making it the number-one exporting state in the nation—a title it has held for nearly 20 years. Much of the credit goes to the more than 880,000 men and women the industry employs. To secure manufacturing’s prominent position in the Texas economic landscape, we must protect our workers from the hazards they face on the job. If your organization has any manufacturing component, we recommend sharing details on the following hazards with your safety director and anyone involved in the manufacturing process.
• Alleviate the stress of repetitive motions and awkward postures by using a mix of engineering
HAZARD: STRAINS Those seemingly minor aches and pains that won’t go away could be symptoms of serious musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). MSDs include injuries to the joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs and nerves. Unsafe lifting techniques and the strain associated with standing for long periods and using repetitive motions to complete tasks are common causes of MSDs.
HAZARD: BURNS
CONTROLS:
MANUFACTURING and administrative controls. Engineering controls include adjustable workstations, diverging conveyors off a main line and tools that allow workers to use neutral postures. Administrative controls include taking breaks, rotating tasks among workers and adjusting production rates.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, 9 out of 10 burns are caused by something other than an open flame. In the manufacturing industry, employees are at risk of burns when they handle hazardous chemicals, conduct welding operations and come into contact with hot objects, liquids, steam and vapors.
• Wear insulated gloves, clothing and other personal protective equipment.
• Comply with your employer’s hazard communication program when handling chemicals.
PROMOTION
• Use ear plugs and other personal protective equipment when required. PUNCTURES,CUTS,SCRAPESOfallthetoolsyouuseatwork,yourhands are the most important. Handling scrap materials, using damaged tools and failing to wear gloves are just a few of the factors that put you at risk of cuts, punctures and scrapes.
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HAZARD:
• Keep tools and equipment in good working condition.
CONTROLS:
• Eliminate noise at its source by buying quieter equipment, maintaining and lubricating machinery and equipment, using sound walls or curtains, and enclosing or isolating the noise source.
• Choose the right tool for the job.
• Use tools the way they were designed to be use. For example, don’t use a screwdriver as a hammer.
• Inspect tools and power cords before using them. Power cords should have all prongs, and they should not be frayed or missing insulation. Tools should have all safety guards, and there should be no cracks in the casing, loose screws or other damage. If you find damaged equipment, immediately tag it and remove it from service.
• Wear cut-resistant gloves.
• Reduce exposure to noise by operating noisy machines during shifts when fewer people are exposed and limiting the amount of time a person spends at a noise source.
in EverythingTexas—IncludingIsBigger THEBUDGET
W hile a pandemic brought the global economy to a crawl, Texas not only held its own but advanced its reputation as a top spot for business relocations and expansions. State leaders, experts, and executives cite factors that long have made Texas an attractive choice: its business-friendly tax and regulatory environment, location, workforce, quality of life, and relatively low cost of living.
The old adage “everything is bigger in Texas” has recently taken on new meaning. Add the state budget to the list.
Craig Casselberry
• Samsung announced a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, in the Austin area.
• Caterpillar recently announced a relocation of its corporate headquarters to Irving, Texas, after more than a century in Illinois. It brings most of its 230 C-suite executives with it.
• Texas Instruments announced a potential $30 billion project in Sherman, including up to four chip fabrication plants.
• Amazon is also expanding. The company has invested more than $29 billion across the state since 2010, including infrastructure and compensation to employees.
In a spending plan released late last year, funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) could add fuel to already fired-up Texas economy. The relief package, passed by Congress and allocated by the 87th Texas Legislature in special session last year, included $13.3 billion for projects to help Texas keep up with population growth and prepare for the future. The 88th Legislature will have another $3 billion to spend, which must be allocated by December 31, 2024, and spent by the end of 2026. At the same time, Texas continues to be a magnet for business relocations and expansions. Chief Executive’s survey of CEOs for the magazine’s ranking of Best and Worst States for Business 2021 found 44 percent were “more open than before to examining new locations.” It continues to note that “in a world of remote work, reshuffled markets, and flat-out rethinking of nearly every aspect of business, the hearts and minds of CEOs are very much up for grabs.” In 2022, Texas again ranked first as a Best State for Business, a position it has held every time Chief Executive has done the list since 2001. Texas’ efforts to attract business have paid off in a big way for the past several years. Highprofile announcements include:
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise moved its headquarters to Spring, just north of Houston.
14 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
• Tesla chose the Austin area for its Gigafactory and its headquarters relocation.
• Oracle moved its headquarters to Austin.
Economic development incentives are valuable tools in the global competitive landscape. With the Texas budget surplus expected to reach as much as $30 billion when the 88th Legislature convenes in January 2023, it’s clear that Texas can put together economic development incentives to land even moreAccessopportunities.totalentand skilled labor is a key factor for most (if not all)
15Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
Governor Greg Abbott said that Texas now leads the nation in Fortune 500 corporate headquarters, with 54, and that 250 companies have moved corporate headquarters to Texas sinceCaterpillar,2015. which posted $51 billion in revenue last year, will become the fifth-largest public company headquartered in North Texas, along with Exxon Mobil, McKesson, AT&T, and Energy Transfer Partners.
THE $17
The $17 billion announcement by Samsung was described as the largest-ever foreign direct investment in Texas; Governor Abbott’s office in November said the project would bring the South Korean company’s investment in the state to more than $35 billion since 1996. The incentive package that helped land the Taylor deal, including property tax abatements, totaled $981 million, according to an analysis by the Austin American-Statesman. Samsung cited factors like the local semiconductor ecosystem, infrastructure stability, local government support, and community development opportunities, as well as the Taylor site’s proximity to the company’s existing Austin facilities, as key factors in their decision.
ININVESTMENTFOREIGNLARGEST-EVERDESCRIBEDBYANNOUNCEMENTBILLIONSAMSUNGWASASTHEDIRECTTEXAS...
With a little help from our friends in Washington, Texas is poised to forge an even stronger economy— one that includes knowledge jobs, technological advancements, and innovations that will improve the quality of life for millions of Texans and beyond.
OUTCOMES TIED TO FUNDING INCREASES IS SMART POLICY.
Whilecybersecurityincreased funding is important, being able to track outcomes tied to funding increases is smart policy. SB 8 requires the Legislative Budget Board, in consultation with the comptroller, to publicly report on a quarterly basis how federal funds appropriated under SB 8 were spent through 2028. But there is even more funding coming Texas’ way.
• $650.5 million for broadband and emergency communications
ARPA created the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund, which includes $10 billion that states can seek in order to invest in capital assets that enable work, education, and health monitoring, including remote options, and to address critical community needs made apparent by the COVID-19 public health emergency. This can include broadband infrastructure projects, digital connectivity technology projects, and improvements to connectivity, device, and digital literacy at “multi-purpose community facilities.” The 87th Legislature appropriated $500.5 million from this Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund for use in Meanwhile,Texas. the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund will provide $350 billion for projects intended to combat the pandemic’s economic fallout and lay the foundation for a strong recovery.
16 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 companies looking to invest. Texas tech hubs—particularly in Austin, Houston, and Dallas—provide more space to create good jobs in communities with an abundance of amenities, a high quality of life, and a deep talent pool from which to draw. A move to give employees more choices in the workplace—such as telework, which became more common during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic—came into play for some companies. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for example, offered relocation to Texas as an option for several hundred headquarters staff members, but staffers had the choice of staying in California. Texas’ ability to attract business is helping fuel its overall population increase as the state heads toward 30 million residents. The US Census Bureau’s population estimates show the state at 29.5 million in 2021, with 310,288 people added between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021. Net migration was 63.6 percent of that increase, according to the Texas Demographic Center. As states began to allocate funds from ARPA, Texas policymakers passed Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) in 2021. Highlights of the funding package include:
• $467.2 million for education and workforce • $226.2 million for IT and
• $7.2 billion for the Unemployment Compensation Fund
With the pandemic driving home the critical importance of high-speed internet, states—including Texas— across the country are using ARPA money to expand broadband access and affordability. Appropriators have increased funds for infrastructure deployment grants, and some have used Capital Projects Fund or State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund allocations to pay for specific projects related to mapping, education, and publicStatehealth.leaders are also focused on enhancing and protecting pandemicbattered supply chains, such as those providing chips that are essential to products from computers to cars. Decisions by large employers to place chip-manufacturing facilities in Texas are in alignment with this focus.
Craig Casselberry is founder and CEO of Quorum Public Affairs Inc. and a 30-year veteran of Texas policy and politics. He is a former aide to two Texas governors and has provided government and public affairs services to companies, issue coalitions, and economic developers since 1994.
WHILE INCREASED FUNDING IS IMPORTANT, BEING ABLE TO TRACK
Eligible state, local, territorial, and tribal governments have significant flexibility in determining how to allocate the funds based on local needs; among the eligible uses are “necessary investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.” Texas’ allocation from this fund is $12.8Thisbillion.funding is separate from the recently enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which will provide an additional $65 billion to help policymakers address high-speed internet access and adoption.
pages Ankit Mahadevia Quiet Leader, Loud Results: How Quiet Leaders Drive Outcomes That Speak for Themselves Post Hill SeptemberPress2022160pages John Talty The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban: How Alabama’s Coach Became the Greatest Ever Matt Holt Books August 2022 256 pages Julie TizianaBattilana,Casciaro Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business Simon & Schuster August 2021 288 pages Annie Duke Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away PortfolioOctober 2022 336 pages Alice Bentinck, Matt Clifford How to Be a Founder: How Entrepreneurs Can Identify, Fund and Launch Their Best Ideas Bloomsbury Business October 2022 224 pages CEO READING LIST 6 NEW & UPCOMING BUSINESS BOOKS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS A great CEO never passes up a chance to learn. Here are six books coming out soon, each with lessons for how to think about innovation, growth, and personal success.
Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford are the cofounders of Entrepreneur First, a company that identifies and invests in great founders, and they’ve worked with thousands of them over the years, some of whom have built billion-dollar businesses.
Against
For Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro, professors at Harvard Business School and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management respectively, power is merely the ability to influence someone else’s behavior. Through examination of examples ranging from broad social movements to Donatella Versace’s leadership after her brother’s death to everyday managers working with employees, the authors show the power isn’t reserved for those at the upper echelons; it’s something any of us can wield for good.
Ankit Mahadevia, founder of nine biotech companies, is himself a quiet leader, and in this book he offers insights for how more reserved, quieter men and women can survive and thrive in leadership—a domain still seen by many as the province of the extroverted. Is Nick Saban the best college football coach ever? There’s a good case to be made. John Talty, sports editor for Alabama Media Group, has written a book that dives into the philosophy of this coach who is not only revered by football fans but who also fascinated leaders in the corporate realm. As the creator of “The Process” and leader of Alabama to six of the last 12 national titles, Saban offers an example to leaders on and off the field, as Taltz shows through original interviews and practical analysis of the man and his ideas.
Steven J. Cyr, MD Cutthroat: A Surgeon’s Fight Big 2022 289
17Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
Dr. Steven J. Cyr is a Mayo Clinic-trained, boardcertified orthopedic spine surgeon who was rated the top doctor in San Antonio by RateMDs. But as this eye-opening memoir reveals, he also believes the US healthcare system has gone off the rails. Despite abiding by the labyrinth of rules physicians are expected to follow, Cyr found himself targeted by insurance companies, other businesses, and government agencies. Cutthroat tells the story of how false attacks on Cyr led to threats of a federal indictment and a damaged reputation and explains what his story tells us about an industry that affects the health and life of Americans.
Annie Duke’s first bestseller, Thinking in Bets, was a fascinating look at decision making in uncertain circumstances. Now, Duke—former World Series of Poker champion and previous contributor to Texas CEO Magazine (Q2 2020, “Leading Through Crisis”)—has written a new book on the power of knowing when to throw in the towel, fold rather than hold, and simply call it quits. “This brilliant and entertaining book documents a major flaw in human actions and decisions: the bias against quitting,” says Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and the New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow.
If you want to start your own venture—or be a better founder to the venture you’ve already started—How to Be a Founder offers insights on everything from fundraising to the first 100 days to working with VCs. The book features a foreword by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn.
Government, Corrupt Businessmen, and a Broken Healthcare System Amplify Publishing May
The stereotypical corporate CEO is far from quiet: he—yes, he—is usually charismatic, aggressive, and prone to oration. But like all stereotypes, this one is severely flawed and not reflective of how success really happens.
JESSE ARENIVAS EnLink Midstream | Dallas Barry E. Davis, who led the founding of EnLink and served as its chairman and CEO for over 25 years, announced his retirement this summer. The company, which offers midstream services to energy companies, chose Jesse Arenivas as its new CEO; he comes to the company after 20 years at Kinder Morgan, one of the largest energy infrastructure companies in North America.
. 18 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
Here are a few recent CEO moves in Texas. Do you have a CEO announcement you’d like to have covered? Email us at info@texasceomagazine.com! ON THE MOVE Texas CEOs
JESSICA BECKER South Texas Health System Behavioral | Edinburg South Texas Health System announced Jessica Becker as the next CEO of South Texas Health System Behavioral (STHSB). Becker, who started in June, served as the COO at Kingwood Pines Hospital prior to joining the team at STHSB. She also led Assurance Health as CEO in Wilmington and Cincinnati, Ohio. Becker replaces former STHSB CEO Sharon Pendlebury
The El Paso Chamber of Commerce named Andrea Hutchins its new CEO. She is the first female CEO in the organization’s 123-year history. Most recently Hutchins was COO at Thomas P. Miller and Associates, and she has held positions as economic development director at El Paso County and City of Leavenworth, Kansas. She follows David Jerome, who accepted an offer from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce back in May.
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KIM ELENEZ Make-A-Wish North Texas | Lubbock Make-A-Wish North Texas announced Kim Elenez as its new president and CEO. For more than 20 years, Elenez has blended her expertise to grow organizations in nonprofits, communities, and businesses, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, D Media Partners, and Integer. Elenez is also the cofounder of the Zambian Rural Women’s Empowerment Fund, which provides loans and supportive services to rural women entrepreneurs. She follows Charlotte Beattie, former CEO of Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who served as the chapter’s interim CEO.
TONY DIBENEDETTO Appspace | Dallas
Brinker International, owner of restaurant chains Chili’s and Maggiano’s Little Italy, has appointed Kevin Hochman as its new CEO. He will simultaneously serve as president of Chili’s and as a member of the board. Wyman Roberts, who previously held those roles, is retiring, but he will stay on board in an advisory capacity for the next 12 months as part of Brinker’s succession plan. Hochman comes from a role as president and chief concept officer of KFC US, with previous leadership roles at Pizza Hut and Procter & Gamble
ANGELA HOLMES Mercury Data Science | Houston Angela Holmes has been named CEO by Mercury Data Science (MDS). Holmes previously served as the company’s COO and on the board of directors. She is a seasoned tech industry executive with more than 20 years of business and product management experience in healthcare, life sciences, energy, and financial services companies that include Ernst & Young, Capgemini, Perficient, and Oncora Medical. Holmes replaces Dan Watkins, who will remain on the board of directors and transition to MDS’s chief strategy officer.
Tony DiBenedetto, a seasoned executive in the tech space, is now the CEO of Appspace, makers of a workplace experience platform with tools for engaging on-site, hybrid, and remote teams. DiBenedetto has served on the Appspace board since 2020, and previously was the founder and CEO of Tribridge, another tech company. He succeeds Brandon Miles, who founded Appspace 20 years ago and served as its CEO since then.
ANDREA HUTCHINS El Paso Chamber of Commerce | El Paso
Photo courtesy of Brinker International / James Wolfe
KEVIN HOCHMAN Brinker International | Lubbock
DAVID LAFITTE Tecovas | Austin Bootmaker Tecovas recently welcomed a new CEO in David Lafitte, who previously served as COO at Deckers Brands, whose portfolio includes UGG, HOKA, Teva, and Sanuk. Tecovas was founded in 2015 by Paul Hedrick as an online retailer but opened its first physical store on Congress Avenue in 2019. More stores are planned after Tecovas raised $56 million earlier this year. Hedrick is stepping down from the CEO role but will remain executive chairman.
JAY MANOUCHEHRI Fluence Analytics | Houston Jay Manouchehri, an expert in digital transformation and an executive with experience at companies like Honeywell and ABB, stepped into the CEO role at Fluence Analytics earlier this spring. He took the reins from Fluence’s cofounder and former CEO, Alex Reed, who remains on the board and now serves as president and chief commercial officer. Fluence recently relocated its headquarters to Houston and announced a $7.5 million round of venture funding.
McCoy’s Building Supply, based in San Marcos, has a new CEO in Meagan McCoy Jones, who has served as COO there since 2018. She is succeeding her father, Brian McCoy, who led the company since 2001, and she is the fourth generation of McCoys to serve in the role. McCoy Jones, who started out at the Manchaca store in Austin in 2007, says, “Being a private, family company is an advantage and privilege, and we don’t take that for granted.”
ANDREA KOSAR Cen-Tex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce | Waco
MEAGAN McCOY JONES McCoy’s Building Supply | San Marcos
CAROL MIU PeopleFun | Dallas Mobile game developer PeopleFun has appointed a new CEO in Carol Miu. Miu joined the company in 2018 as senior director of Product Management and quickly moved up into more senior positions before becoming CEO. Prior to PeopleFun, she served as chief data scientist at Yvolver, a provider of reward programs and monetization tools for mobile game developers, also based in Dallas. She succeeds Tony Goodman, a cofounder of PeopleFun, who led the company as CEO starting in 2011.
The Cen-Tex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce announced that Andrea Kosar (formerly Andrea Morgan) will be its new president and CEO, a change that took effect in May. A Baylor grad and entrepreneur (she and her husband own the freight broker Twisted Nail), Kosar also has experience in media and PR. She previously worked for 25 News KXXV, where she created a weekly segment called Positively Central Texas
20 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
GRANT MOISE DallasNews Corporation | Dallas DallasNews Corporation, which publishes the Dallas Morning News, recently announced that it has promoted Grant Moise to the role of CEO. Moise has held many roles at the News over the past two decades; he will continue to serve as the paper’s president and publisher. Meanwhile, Mary Kathryn (Katy) Murray will take on the role of company president as she continues in her role as CFO. Previous CEO Robert W. Decherd will remain on the board through September 2023.
STEVEN PHO Spruce | Austin Seasoned technology executive Steven Pho took over as Spruce’s new CEO in July. Pho has been a director on the Spruce board for nearly two years. Prior to joining Spruce, he held leadership positions at Forager, Favor Delivery, Retailmenot, Inc., and Thomas Weisel Partners. Pho steps into the role formerly held by Spruce founder and CEO Ben Johnson, who will assume the role of president.
MICHAEL SHUMAN Membersy | Austin Michael Shuman is the new CEO of subscription-based dental care provider Membersy For the past six years, he has served as Membersy’s chief revenue officer. His efforts helped the company scale broadly and land a $66 million investment from Spectrum Equity last year. Shuman steps into the shoes of Membersy’s former CEO, the company’s founder, Eric Johnson.
SURESH YANNAMANI Exela Technologies BPA | Irving IRVING — Exela Technologies, Inc. promoted Suresh Yannamani to CEO of Exela Technologies BPA, LLC, a subsidiary of Exela. Yannamani has held a number of roles of progressively expanding responsibility since the mid-90’s at companies that include Sourcecorp, BancTec, Inc., DocuData Solutions LC, all of which are subsidiaries of Exela Technologies; Lason, IBM, and Coopers & Lybrand
SARI VATSKE Central Texas Food Bank | Austin Sari M. Vatske is the new president and CEO in the 40-year history of the Central Texas Food Bank . Her previous role was as executive vice president of Feeding South Florida , based in Pembroke Park. While she comes from Florida, her predecessor, Derrick Chubbs , left Central Texas Food Bank to lead Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida in Orlando.
. 21Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
LEONID ROZKIN OrderMyGear | Dallas OrderMyGear (OMG) named Leonid Rozkin its next CEO. Rozkin was previously OMG’s CFO. In his new role, he will also sit on OMG’s board of directors. Rozkin has more than a decade of private equity, investment banking, and financial experience at companies that include JPMorgan and Francisco Partners. Former OMG CEO Dave Dutch has transitioned to executive chairman for the company.
M. Ray Perryman
BASINPERMIANTHE
A TEXAS-SIZED RESOURCE
THE PERMIAN BASIN RECENTLY REACHED RECORD DAILY PRODUCTION LEVELS AND NEW MILESTONES IN BOTH OIL AND NATURAL GAS, AND RIG COUNTS ARE RISING RAPIDLY ACROSS THE STATE.
DOWNSTREAM: refining, liquefied natural gas (LNG), petrochemicals and derivative products, and export activity
24 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
PETROLEUM FROM THE PERMIAN BASIN HAS THE MOST ATTRACTIVE LOW-CARBON CHARACTERISTICS OF ANY MAJOR ONSHORE FORMATION IN THE WORLD.
UPSTREAM: drilling, exploration, production, and all associated oilfield service activities
SECTORSENERGYMAJOR
MIDSTREAM: pipelines and other transportation
The Permian Basin is among the most important energy-producing regions in the world. About 72 percent of Texas oil production and 46 percent of Texas natural gas production occurs there, and the area is a major center for renewable energy resources and the technology that facilitates global production. In addition to providing energy crucial to meeting global needs, activity in the Permian Basin is a substantial source of stimulus to the economy and a significant source of tax and royalty revenue to government entities. Other benefits include improvements in the trade balance fostered by energy exports and enhanced energy security for the United States and our allies. The overall level of activity and production in the Permian Basin was on a strong upward trajectory for most of the last decade, with technological advances and rising demand due to a healthy global economy. The COVID-19 pandemic and the February 2021 winter storm caused notable dips, but the industry has recently seen a massive resurgence as worldwide demand rises and many countries are embargoing Russian oil due to the invasion of Ukraine. The Permian Basin recently reached record daily production levels and new milestones in both oil and natural gas, and rig counts are rising rapidly across the state. Drilling and production activity involves substantial capital investment and hiring, and the economic stimulus generates multiplier effects throughout the economy. Direct activity in major categories of the energy sector leads to spending across a spectrum of support industries located in communities across Texas and beyond. Major sectors of the energy industry include upstream (drilling, exploration, production, and all associated oilfield service activities), midstream (pipelines and other transportation), and downstream (refining, liquefied natural gas [LNG], petrochemicals and derivative products, and export activity).
The Perryman Group recently estimated the total economic impact of the Permian Basin in 2050 under scenarios reflecting varying global growth rates (from 2 percent to 4 percent per annum), oil prices (from $45 per barrel to $175 per barrel in today’s dollars), incentives, and climate policy. Depending on the assumed scenario, the projected 2050 impact of the Permian Basin (in constant 2021 dollars and including multiplier effects) was found to be $145.7 billion to $219.9 billion in annual gross product and approximately 557,600 to 778,300 jobs in Texas. In every case, the effects were greater than they are today.
$145.7B – $219.9B IN ANNUAL GROSS PRODUCT 557,600 – 778,300 JOBS IN TEXAS IMPACT2050 OF THE PERMIAN BASIN
25Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
The Perryman Group estimates that, when multiplier effects are considered, the total economic benefits of the upstream, midstream, and downstream oil and gas related activity in the Permian Basin include $129.2 billion in annual gross product and almost 508,800 jobs in Texas based on 2021 levels of activity (2022 will be higher). To put these impacts in perspective, the total effects represent 7.8 percent of Texas private-sector gross product. On a per-capita basis, the impact totals $15,914 in spending, $4,377 in gross product, and $1,199 in personal income for each resident in Texas. Looking ahead, the Permian Basin will continue to be an essential source of energy. One particularly attractive aspect of the Permian Basin energy complex that should influence future growth is the low carbon nature of the crude oil that is found in the region. In fact, petroleum from the Permian Basin has the most attractive low-carbon characteristics of any major onshore formation in the world. When coupled with the sheer magnitude of the oil and gas resources in the area, the abundant regional wind power investments and potential, and the emerging solar presence and capabilities, the Permian Basin is clearly destined to be a major force in the efforts to provide the needed energy to support global growth and prosperity while addressing pressing climate challenges.
MARKETNEEDEDMOBILIZEDSUPPLIESNATURALSECURITYGLOBALISILLUSTRATED,HASOFRUSSIANRECENTINVASIONUKRAINECLEARLYITESSENTIALTOENERGYTHATGASBEASTOFILLNEEDS.
Responsible development of the vast, low-carbon resources of the Permian Basin is essential not only in confronting the climate crisis, but also for achieving compelling economic, social, and humanitarian objectives. Under a wide variety of economic conditions, petroleum prices, and climate strategies, the demand for the oil and gas resources in the Permian Basin will increase for the foreseeable future even as its renewable energy footprint continues to expand. Policies that ignore this reality cannot help but be counterproductive. As the world confronts and seeks solutions for multiple complex issues, the energy sector of the region is a critical and, indeed, indispensable partner Dr. M. Ray Perryman is president and chief executive officer of The Perryman theofwhich(PerrymanGroup.com),Grouphasservedtheneedsover3,000clientsoverpastfourdecades.
AS THE
26 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 Economic activity generates tax receipts, and the benefits of the energy sector for federal, state, and local government entities are multifaceted. In addition to the billions in oil and natural production taxes and other levies paid directly as a result of activity in the Permian Basin, the substantial increase in business activity the industry stimulates across the economy also generates indirect and induced taxes through channels such as increased retail sales taxes. Total tax collections from direct as well as indirect and induced sources to the State of Texas from Permian Basin oil and gas activity include an estimated $11.8 billion in 2021, with federal taxes of an estimated $24 billion and substantial fiscal benefits to local government entities. Another perspective on the essential nature of activity in the Permian Basin involves future global demand. The world is projected to need almost 50 percent more energy by 2050, including in excess of a 30 percent increase in both oil and natural gas under baseline conditions even considering substantial deployment of renewable sources. These projections are obtained directly from the latest forecasts of the US Department of Energy and indicate that, even as the world grapples with the consequences of climate change, it will require a notable increase in the responsible production of traditional resources. The Permian Basin can contribute cleaner, more environmentally friendly oil than other major production areas and will continue to be an important producer of fuels through both the traditional avenues as well as renewable energy sources. The Permian Basin’s contribution to US renewable energy capacity is also significant and growing. Wind capacity is about 12.3 percent of the Texas total and has far more than doubled in the past decade, with additional projects anticipated in the future. A significant portion of the state’s solar capacity is in the Permian Basin, solar capacity in Texas is expanding rapidly, and about 30 percent of the state’s currently planned solar capacity (and 10 percent of that in the entire country) is scheduled to be built in the region. Another important resource in the region that is often overlooked is the intellectual capital that stems from more than a century of energy production and innovation in the region. Another important role of the Permian Basin is that natural gas production in the region supports liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, and it is well connected via pipeline to the areas where LNG facilities are located. The creation of a global market through LNG exports has significant geopolitical consequences. As the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has clearly illustrated, it is essential to global energy security that natural gas supplies be mobilized as needed to fill market needs. In fact, if this avenue were presently available at sufficient scale to supply the needs of Europe, the ability of Russia to impact global markets would be significantly diminished. As this emerging segment of the global energy complex continues to expand, the Permian Basin will be a significant source of the needed inputs. As noted, meeting future energy needs will of necessity require conventional fuels because renewable sources cannot be deployed fast enough or with enough reliability to provide sufficient power. The consequences of failing to responsibly utilize the energy resources required to sustain economic growth even as critical climate initiatives are implemented are profound. The alternative is to deliberately constrain expansion and, hence, human potential and well-being. Virtually all (more than 80 percent) of the incremental increase in global energy demand is occurring in emerging countries seeking to raise output levels and improve living standards. At present, about 2 billion people in the world (more than 25 percent of the overall population) survive on $3.20 per day or less. About 700 million, more than twice the population of the United States, has access to no more than $1.90 per day. This tragic situation can be remedied only through economic growth, which requires adequate energy resources.
27Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com Enhance the quality of healthcare for your employees and their families while lowering your costs. Get Your FREE Copy of the Amazon #1 Bestselling Book Life & Death Decisions In The C-Suite Featuring Leading Industry Expert & Consultant Dan LaBroad Visit: https://tinyurl.com/free-ldcs-book Contact Dan at: Daniel@ovationlife.com Just scan the QR code and request your copy now.
28 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
Here is a closer
indicators. TEXAS INDICATORSECONOMIC from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas DallasFed.org
at
and several
Payroll employment increased statewide and in most Texas major metros in the first part of the year, and Texas Business Outlook Surveys indicated that wage growth remained highly elevated in the manufacturing and service sectors. look these other economic
29Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
LABOR MARKET Employment Growth Increases
Texas employment expanded an annualized 6.2 percent (66,360 jobs) in May after growing a downwardly revised 5.2 percent in April (Chart 1). Job gains accelerated in most major sectors, with construction posting the fastest employment growth. In May, Texas payroll employment was up 2.9 percent from prepandemic levels, while the US remained 0.5 percent below those levels.
The Dallas Fed’s Texas Employment Forecast is for 4.0 percent job growth this year (December/December).
May employment growth showed solid gains across the major Texas metros, except for El Paso (Chart 2). Fort Worth led job growth, with payrolls increasing an annualized 9.0 percent. Dallas followed closely, posting an annualized 8.0 percent job growth. Payrolls climbed an annualized 7.6 percent in Houston, 5.5 percent in San Antonio, 5.2 percent in McAllen and 2.6 percent in Austin. Employment fell in El Paso by 2.2 percent but was up compared with December 2021 levels.
The Texas Business Outlook Surveys indicate that wage growth remained elevated (Chart 3). In May, the three-month moving average of the manufacturing survey’s wages and benefits index moved up from 50.0 to 52.2. The service sector wages and benefits index remained relatively flat at 34.8, based on a three-month moving average. Wage pressures eased in the retail sector as the index dipped from 34.3 to 33.0.
The Dallas Fed’s Texas Employment Forecast is for 3.4 percent job growth this year (December/December).
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas promotes a strong financial system and healthy economy in the Eleventh Federal Reserve District, which includes Texas, northern Louisiana, and southern New Mexico. Through our offices in Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio, we work for and with the people of our district to build an economy that works for everyone.
Subscribe to Texas Economic Indicators and other reports from the Dallas Fed at dallasfed.org/pubs/e-sub.
HOUSING Texas existing-home sales were flat in April, and the three-month moving average dipped (Chart 4). Sales totaled nearly 35,000 homes in April, little changed from March’s figure and up 1.1 percent year over year. Rising mortgage rates and record-high prices have slowed home sales. Mortgage rates have increased by more than 200 basis points since the beginning of the year and are at their highest level since January 2009. Meanwhile, single-family housing permits fell 1.1 percent in April.
TEXAS BUSINESS OUTLOOK SURVEYS
Payrolls Expand in Most Major Metros
• Only CEOs from large companies (more than 500 employees) are included.
Data on Top Employee-Rated CEOs courtesy of | comparably.com
METHODOLOGYSELECTION
F rom market cap to revenue growth, there are many ways to measure a CEO’s success. But at the end of the day, one of the most revealing measures might be nonfinancial: What do employees think? Do they feel respected by the CEO? Do they like working at the company? A company can have blockbuster earnings and great PR, but none of that is sustainable without a base of talented, committed, and engaged employees. Smart CEOs recognize this and spend ample amounts of time and effort ensuring their employees, from the executive team to the frontline workers, have the fulfilling workplace they deserve. In this issue, Texas CEO Magazine wanted to highlight a few Texas CEOs who got the seal of approval from their employees. We realized up front that this could be a daunting task. Each of the millions of businesses in the state is led by somebody, and it would be a fool’s errand for anyone to suss out the “best” among them, especially along such subjective lines. And yet we still wanted to recognize a selection of the best. Here’s the approach we took: We partnered with Comparably, a Santa Monica-based company that collects workplace culture, salary, and corporate brand reputation data about companies across the country. Comparably pulled their Texas data for us, identifying the large-company CEOs with A+ scores based on employee ratings over the past year. These 22 CEOs are the ones we have highlighted in our primary list on the following pages. Read on to see who they are and to glean insights they wanted to pass on to Texas CEO Magazine readers. To this list we added some picks of our own—other Texas CEOs with very high employee-approval ratings on Comparably. For all CEOs featured, we included a representative quote from an employee, a response to the prompt: What do you like best about the leadership team? Like any list, this one has certain weaknesses. One, this is not an exhaustive list of all large-company CEOs in Texas whose employees love them. Rather, it is a glimpse at some of the CEOs who are doing a great job along the people line based on one specific metric.
• All CEOs listed are in the Top 5 percent with an A+ grade (4.5 out of 5 score).
• A minimum of at least 75 employee ratings were needed within the previous 12 months (May 31, 2021-May 31, 2022).
These large-company Texas CEOs get high marks from their employees.
• All CEOs listed are from companies that have an overall company culture score of 4.5 out of 5 (A+, Top 5 percent).
Feature
Second, this list reflects the demographic makeup of people who currently hold large-company CEO roles. Among the Fortune 500, only 41 companies are currently led by women, and white men are still overrepresented. This reality of who is leading large companies in the country and in Texas is reflected in the list. And now, without further ado, here is a selection of Texas CEOs whose own employees gave them a big vote of confidence.
• Secured $1.2 billion in funding from a group led by tech investment firm Silver Lake, which made it possible to distribute $125 million to Integrity employees through the company’s innovative Employee Ownership Plan.
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BRYAN W. ADAMS Cofounder & CEO, Integrity HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2006
From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
Recent Company Milestones
What Employees Say about Integrity Leadership “The face-to-face with the executive team certainly builds camaraderie and avoids employees feeling alienated from the upper echelons of the company.” Integrity is an “insurtech” company that uses data, technology, and a human touch to deliver a better insurance experience. The company’s singular purpose is to help people protect their life, health, and wealth so they can make the most of what life brings. Bryan W. Adams cofounded and currently leads the company, which employs around 5,500 people and works with more than 420,000 independent agents and advisors. Last year, Integrity raised $1.2 billion in a round led by SilverPriorLake.toFounding
Success becomes a byproduct of focusing on helping others and losing yourself in service. It’s something I strive to put into action every day.”
Adams is considered one of the nation’s leading experts in the senior market and speaks frequently across the country about the importance of helping families on one of the most difficult days of their lives. He earned a degree in business administration from Texas Tech University.
• Added over 50 successful companies to its network of partners in 2021.
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Always put people first, because you’re in a people business, and if you ever forget that, you’ll be out of business.”
“It’s difficult to narrow it down! However, one bit of advice that I heard many years ago from Zig Ziglar has stayed with me throughout my career: ‘You can have everything in life that you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.’ To me, that speaks of the incredible power of having a servant’s heart and mindset in everything you do.
Recent proud moment? “One of the initiatives I’m most proud of is the founding of our Employee Ownership Plan, which awards every Integrity employee with meaningful equity in our company. Employees are the key to our success, and through this innovative program, they are able to share in the value they help create. Working together with a common focus lifts all of us to greater heights as we work, win, prosper, and share together. Since we started this program two years ago, we’ve distributed $175 million in cash to participating employees. I believe equity-sharing models like this are good for business, and I hope it inspires other companies to create similar programs for their employees.”
Integrity, Bryan was vice president of Corporate Development at Directors Investment Group, Inc., a financial services company that operates several life insurance companies. He became the youngest vice president in the company’s history.
• Served more than 3.5 million Americans with over $10 billion in annual paid premiums.
What Employees Say about Sunnova Leadership
HEADQUARTERS: Houston CEO SINCE: 2012 Energy entrepreneur John Berger founded Sunnova—a provider of residential solar, battery storage, and system protection services—in 2012. Since then he has served as its CEO and president. Berger grew up in Bryan, Texas, and went to Texas A&M University and earned a degree in civil engineering, cum laude. Later he got an MBA from Harvard Business School and while there worked at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Later, he worked at SunCap Financial, a residential solar service provider, and Standard Renewable Energy, a provider and installer of renewable energy and energyefficient products and services.
33Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
JOHN BERGER Chairman, President & CEO, Sunnova Energy International
TEXAS CEO PICK Feature
• Expanded offerings into Canada in 2021 in collaboration with the Royal Bank of Canada. OJO.ca has risen to become one of the 10 most visited home search sites in the country.
“The leadership team is constantly challenging me and truly believes the idea of investing in their employees.”
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT OJO LABS LEADERSHIP “Our leadership team sets an outstanding example of leading with empathy, consideration, and truly values each and every member of the team. They set the tone for a welcoming, inclusive, collaborative, innovative culture that is felt throughout the entire company.”
JOHN BERKOWITZ FOUNDER & CEO OJO Labs, maker of an end-to-end platform for buying and selling homes at scale
• Landed at number 49 on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, and 29 on the Deloitte Fast 500, thanks to three-year revenue growth of 6,840 percent.
HEADQUARTERS: Austin RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
• Involved in more than $3 billion in real estate closings.
• The OJO Select Network—the company’s agent referral network—crossed the 30,000-agent threshold since launching in late 2021.
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “When starting a business, it’s easy to get tied up in a fear of failure. A mentor taught me that conquering fear is not the objective. It’s about using fear to your advantage. Now, instead of trying to eliminate fear, I harness it and use it to propel me forward.” Your leadership philosophy summarized? “I seek to find and unleash people’s individual superpowers.”
Berger—who has joked about the thick skin it takes to be a solar power company based in Houston—then founded Sunnova, a company that aims to lead the energy transition by focusing on the power needs of residential consumers. Berger notes that residential consumers tend to pay more for solar than commercial customers and get less reliability. Today, over 200,000 households in 38 states and territories use Sunnova products. From the CEO “You need to be about recruiting the best people and putting yourself really further and further away from what you started out to do, whatever those tasks may be,” Berger told the Freeing Energy podcast. “And you really have to be a jack of all trades, but as you grow the business, you have to let go.”
34 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
FERNANDO BLEICHMAR CEO, Academic Partnerships
• Helping regional university partners across the country expand access to affordable and high-quality online education with an average weighted tuition of less than $15,000 for an entire AP-supported degree.
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT BIGCOMMERCE LEADERSHIP The leadership team is “strategic, forward thinking, open to and embrace change. Hyperfocused on the employees, the partners, and merchant success.”
Fernando Bleichmar became CEO in February, succeeding Rob Ganji, who remains a senior advisor to the board. Fernando served in leadership roles at Cengage Group for eight years, including as executive vice president, general manager of US Higher Education, chief product officer, and chief strategy officer. Prior to joining Cengage Group, Bleichmar held roles at Elsevier Health Sciences and Boston Consulting Group. He holds an MBA from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Recent Company Milestones
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Spend 90 percent of my time focused on heart (the right culture), mind (a clear strategy), and hands (the right people).”
From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “Assume people have good intent and are capable, and our job as leaders is to make sure they have clear and aligned context.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Southwest is a Texas-based company we look to a lot as an analogy of low-cost innovation. We are disrupting traditional expensive education programs by partnering with innovative universities that offer high ROI, affordable online education.” What Employees Say about Academic Partnerships Leadership “They speak clearly and don’t try to hide things. They also communicate the company vision/goals well, and seem to care about the individual person.”
• Grew revenue 44.3 percent to $219.9 million in 2021. For the fourth consecutive year, the company’s revenue growth rate increased relative to the year before—a feat seldom achieved by publicly traded, recurringrevenue software companies.
Academic Partnerships is an online facilitator that helps regional public universities expand access to top-quality, affordable, and workforce-relevant education. The company sets itself apart by focusing on innovation in online learning, using “the strengths, experience, and creativity of [its] people.”
HEADQUARTERS: Austin RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2022 BRENT BELLM CEO & CHAIRMAN BigCommerce, provider of an ecommerce platform to approximately 60,000 online stores in more than 150 countries
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “One of my professors at Harvard Business School, the late Clay Christensen, taught me the playbook that I’ve used to successfully grow PayPal, HomeAway, and BigCommerce. Professor Christensen coined the idea of ‘disruptive innovation,’ which explains how to build a disruptive (and successful) technology business, and is today considered one of the foremost business theories of the internet era. Christensen’s course and concept left a permanent impression on me. I had the good fortune to learn it directly from him ... and the opportunity to apply it successfully to three businesses over the last 15 years.” Your leadership philosophy summarized? “There are three big pillars of leadership: strategy, operations, and culture. It’s not that one is more important than the others, but rather the drive to excel at all three.”
• Recognized as best CEO and CFO by the Austin Business Journal in 2021 and “great place to work” and “top workplaces” awards for the company’s largest office locations in Austin, San Francisco, London, and Sydney.
TEXAS CEO PICK
From the CEO “Some things have remained the same over the years. These include our fundamental dedication to employees and their welfare, and being part of the communities we serve.”
What Employees Say about H-E-B Leadership “[The leadership team] makes sure everyone is taken care of ahead of themselves. They make work feel like a partnership in pursuit of a goal rather than a job under superiors.”
35Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
CHARLES E. BUTT Chairman & CEO, H-E-B HEADQUARTERS: San Antonio CEO SINCE: 1971 FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
TEXAS CEOMARVINPICK CROSSNOE CEO CoNetrix, a family of technology companies including AccountingWare, CoNetrix Technology, CoNetrix Security, and Tandem
Charles E. Butt, a leader and philanthropist, has served as CEO of the revered Texas grocery chain H-E-B for over 50 years. Today, he heads a leadership team that has continued to grow H-E-B’s reputation as a fixture in the community and an excellent place to work. H-E-B currently operates over 420 stores in Texas and Mexico, employing more than 145,000 employees—or partners as they are known at the company. It owns Favor and operates several brands, including Central Market. Talk to any Texan and they’ll have a great H-E-B story, most often including one of its dedicated, motivated employees. H-E-B began in 1905 in Kerrville, when Charles Butt’s grandmother, Florence, opened a grocery store on the ground floor of the Butt family home. Florence’s son (and Charles’ father), Howard Edward Butt, later assumed control of the store, and his initials became the name of the growing chain. When Charles Butt became CEO in 1971, H-E-B was at $250 million in annual sales; today, it’s at over $28 billion.
Your leadership philosophy summarized? “Apply yourself to your strengths, and surround yourself with people who are much better than you to fill your weaknesses.”
HEADQUARTERS: Lubbock Feature
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT CONETRIX LEADERSHIP “Almost all of our leadership team are good listeners. They take the time to listen and weigh all the facts before making a decision. So even when going in diverse directions, I still feel that I was heard.”
“I once was purchasing lumber for my construction business and a serious misunderstanding regarding price arose between myself and the proprietor. I was disgusted with the situation and started to leave. The proprietor stopped me and said: ‘Marvin, we don’t want anyone leaving here unhappy!’ As a result of that statement, I ended up purchasing materials exclusively from that supplier for many years. That is the philosophy that we have adopted at CoNetrix, and it has proved successful for our business. We don’t want anyone unhappy with our services.”
TEXAS CEO PICK
HEADQUARTERS: Austin RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
36 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
BNSF Logistics is a multimodal third-party logistics company founded in 2002 as a subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Today, it has more than 25 offices across North America. The company describes itself as driven dually by people and technology, and it moves freight just about any way you could imagine, from rail to truck to boat to plane. The company is led by Dan Curtis, who has been there for over a decade. He joined BNSF logistics in 2011 as CFO, transitioned to COO in 2014, and then took over as president in early 2018. Originally from New Braunfels, Curtis majored in accounting at Baylor University. After that, he went to work at Ernst & Young and later held leadership positions at Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst and Greatwide Logistics Services, also headquarted in Dallas.
DAN CURTIS President, BNSF Logistics HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2018 MATT FLAKE PRESIDENT & CEO Q2, a financial experience company dedicated to providing digital banking and lending solutions to banks, credit unions, alternative finance, and fintech companies in the US and internationally
• Q2 saw record revenue, profits, employee engagement, customer satisfaction numbers, and product innovation. “Doing all of this during a pandemic was truly inspiring to me,” Flake says.
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT Q2 LEADERSHIP “Collegial, humble, and practitioners of servant leadership. They not only empower and give you agency, but in fact expect it. You can definitely make an impact here and will be listened to.”
In addition to its core work of transporting goods, BNSF Logistics also expands its mission to doing good in its community and industry. Last year, the company partnered with Veterati, an organization that connects transitioning service members with business professionals to provide career mentorship and support. BNSF Logistics employees now donate time as mentors, offering one-on-one conversations and helping veterans overcome hurdles in transitioning from military service to employment. The company has also partnered with Truckers Against Trafficking, a nonprofit that educates and mobilizes members of the trucking industry to combat domestic human trafficking. From the CEO “I’m not a big command-and-control guy,” Curtis told D Magazine in 2020. “I’m an empowerment person.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Amy Porter, former CEO, chairman, and founder of Affinipay (she is now executive chairman). Amy is an amazing example of what hard work, curiosity, humility, and passion can do to create a meaningful business in this world that has changed so many lives.”
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
What Employees Say about BNSF Logistics Leadership “I have had many chances to interact with them in passing, which helps reduce problems that usually arise with low visibility and interaction with upper management.” “Dan Curtis is very down to earth and genuinely seems to care about the employees.”
“If you don’t hire people smarter then your company will become dumber.” Your leadership philosophy summarized? “I believe every person can do far more than they think they are capable of, and my goal is to create a culture that inspires them to maximize their potential through opportunity, hard work, trust, and love.”
• Real estate lending department crossed the $1 billion threshold in both loans originated and loans serviced.
Your leadership philosophy summarized? “Hire smart people and work to remove obstacles to their success. As CEO, I accomplish nothing on my own. Our organization is successful due to the efforts of the team.”
What Employees Say about Dell Technologies Leadership “They are extremely passionate about what they do, lead by example, and that attitude rubs off on the employees.”
Dell Technologies is one of the world’s largest IT companies, with revenues of $101 billion and 130,000 team members across the globe. Houstonborn Michael Dell founded the company in 1984 at age 19, while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin. Based on a model of selling computers directly to consumers, Dell experienced massive growth in the 1990s. In 1992, Dell earned the distinction of becoming the youngest CEO to be ranked on the Fortune 500. In 2004, he stepped away from the CEO role but resumed it in 2007. He took Dell private in 2013, and later combined Dell, EMC, and VMware in 2016 and relisted the company on the public markets in 2018. Dell’s other activities include serving as chairman of the VMware board of directors after VMware was spun off from Dell Technologies in 2021 and leading with his wife, Susan, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which provides support to children in poverty in India, South Africa, and the United States. Last year, Dell released his second book, Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader. From the CEO “People are the greatest asset of the company. We will provide an environment that attracts, motivates, and retains the best people in the industry. Employees will participate in decisions that affect their own work and receive the rewards that come as a result of their efforts. We will always reward superior performance.”
Most admired fellow Texas CEO? “Marc Laird, CEO Cornerstone Home Lending. Marc has successfully led his company for 35 years through every business cycle imaginable. He is widely respected in his industry, by his peers, and by his team.”
37Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT AMPLIFY LEADERSHIP
MICHAEL DELL Chairman & CEO, Dell Technologies HEADQUARTERS: Austin CEO SINCE: 1984
“They’re completely honest about strategy and why things happen or don’t happen. There is also a culture of ‘no stupid questions or suggestions,’ and I really appreciate that.”
HEADQUARTERS: Austin RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
KENDALL GARRISON CEO Amplify Credit Union, provider of fee-free banking and award-winning lending to people throughout the state of Texas
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “Be transparent. At Amplify, we’ve put that into practice by our concept of Radical Transparency. No information is secret; we share everything we know with the entire team, and no question is off limits.”
TEXAS CEO PICK Feature
—from a statement of company values written by Michael Dell in 1988, a few months after the company first went public
• Launched fee-free banking in Q1 2022, becoming the first Texas-based financial institution to charge zero fees on all deposit products.
The Rent-a-Center story traces back to 1960s Kansas and a store called Mr. T’s Rental. The owner of that business rented washers and dryers to people who, once they had made enough payments, owned the appliances. One of Mr. T’s employees saw the promise of this model and started Rent-a-Center in 1973 in Witchita. Today, the company allows consumers to rent name-brand furniture, electronics, appliances, computers, and smartphones and has over 3,000 store locations across the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico—including 12 new stores opened just this year. Rent-a-Center’s CEO is Mitch Fadel, whose roots with the company go back over 30 years. From 1992 to 2000, he served as president and CEO of the company’s subsidiary Rent-A-Center Franchising International, and later as COO, president, and director. He left to serve as president of US Pawn for Austin-based EZCORP in 2015 before returning to become CEO of Rent-a-Center in 2018. Fadel and Rent-a-Center place a priority on philanthropy, with particular focus on hunger relief and youth empowerment. To date, it has raised over $1.5 million through its partnership with the North Texas Food Bank. It also donates funds and furniture to organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and Boys and Girls Clubs of America, as well as funding scholarships for customers’ and employees’ children through Scholarship America.
What Employees Say about Rent-A-Center Leadership “Mitch travels to various stores, which is good for employee morale and enables him to remain connected and informed.”
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MITCH FADEL CEO, Rent-a-Center HEADQUARTERS: Plano CEO SINCE: 2018 From the CEO “As a company, we strive to enrich the lives of our nation’s youth by providing them the opportunity to reach their full potential,” said Fadel earlier this year. “Our charitable efforts support students in the pursuit of higher education. We believe earning a college education can make a huge difference in everyone’s life by offering them the opportunity to be the best they can be.”
“I like that our leadership team seems to be constantly reevaluating best practices. This includes everything from operations to healthcare benefits to diversity and inclusion training.”
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• Three high-profile lateral hires in the past year, including: COO Leslie Rohrbacker, who left her position as CHRO at Fragomen to join BAL. Jeff Joseph, one of the country’s top immigration litigators, joined BAL from the firm he founded in Denver. Maggie Murphy from Jackson Lewis, who brought her whole team over to BAL’s Austin office.
From the
Best leadership advice you ever got? “Read widely and keep learning.” Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “My leadership philosophy is time-tested and true: be a
• BAL’s proprietary case management system, Cobalt, was named a 2022 CODiE Award finalist by the Software & Information Industry Association.
In the past year alone, BAL has continued to expand its national presence, opening two new offices in California at Santa Clara and Los Angeles and one in Denver. In Texas, it expanded its Austin presence with additional legal teams, and in Dallas it acquired 100,000 additional square feet of office space that it is currently building out as a new wing of its Fudgeheadquarters.earnedhis
“Elon Musk.” What Employees Say about BAL Leadership “Jeremy Fudge is always willing to discuss your ideas with you to see if he can implement them or change policies that aren’t working.” Feature
• BAL’s technology team won Legalweek’s recognition as Most Innovative Law Firm Operations Team of 2021
Managing
• Created a technology spinoff, Dunasi, dedicated to solving immigration challenges through innovative tech tools. FUDGE Partner, BAL HEADQUARTERS: Richardson CEO SINCE: 2013 CEO servant fellow Texas CEO?
leader. Genuinely love your people and look for meaningful ways to serve them.” Most-admired
BAL—or Berry Appleman & Leiden—has a mission to be “the world’s preeminent corporate immigration firm, offering [its] clients the highest level of service, tailored immigration advice and analysis, industryleading technology, and overall excellence.” In this mission, it is led by managing partner Jeremy Fudge, who has overseen aggressive firm growth despite the challenges of the pandemic.
Recent Company Milestones
JEREMY
juris doctor, cum laude, from the University of Texas School of Law and a Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude, in journalism and political science from Baylor University.
Your
WHAT
“The quarterly State of the Labs gives all of us a full picture of the last quarter and year to date across projects, financials, departments. I appreciate transparency.”
Early in her career, Whitney Wolfe Herd was in on the ground floor of dating app Tinder. When she struck out on her own, she was determined to build an app that solved for the weaknesses of Tinder—primarily its downsides for women users. Her brainchild became Bumble, the dating app where women (the ones seeking heterosexual relationships at least) must initiate contact with men. Contacts must be made within 24 hours of a match, and technology spares women from inappropriate content that might be sent by men on the app. Bumble has been a runaway success. Whitney took the company public in 2021—becoming the youngest women to ever do so—and raised $2.2 billion in the process. At that point, she also become the world’s youngest self-made womanWolfebillionaire.Herdgrew up in Salt Lake City but got a degree in international studies from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She leads Bumble from the company’s Austin HQ, which is decorated in bright yellow with tasteful beehive touches. Last June, she gave all 700 Bumble employees a week off to address pandemic burnout and spend a little time on themselves. These days off came in addition to employees’ regular vacation time. She is also known for her fierce championing of women, not just those who use Bumble, but those who work there. From the CEO “Companies must put infrastructure in place to support their female employees and ensure that they receive the benefits of male and female leadership,” Wolfe Herd wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. What Employees Say about Bumble Leadership “I’ve never before worked for a company with a leadership team that’s 95 percent women. It makes such a difference, and it trickles down.”
and
TEXAS CEO PICK
matters.” Most-admired
the
is worth following, and do
HEADQUARTERS: Fort Worth FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “To lead, we must first lead ourselves.” leadership philosophy summarized? “Stand for something that work that fellow Texas CEO? “Cynt Marshall, Dallas Mavericks CEO.” EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT CAUSELABS LEADERSHIP
WHITNEY WOLFE HERD Founder & CEO, Bumble HEADQUARTERS: Austin CEO SINCE: 2014 SHERYLE GILLIHAN CEO CauseLabs, a company that works with nonprofits to build websites with continuous-improvement lifecycles
40 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
Recent Company Milestones
Hyams was founder of B-Side, a technology platform for independent film analytics, marketing, and distribution. Prior to B-Side, he was vice president of Engineering at Trilogy Software. Hyams has spoken repeatedly about his and his company’s focus on diversity and inclusion and belonging, which the company addresses not only in its product but within the company itself. “It’s not just some random corporate directive. It’s really integrated into the business top to bottom,” he told Mary Buckley of IDA Ireland last year.
I told him if it was my job, I would start meeting weekly with our Sales and Customer Service leadership. I would dig deep into our sales pipeline, quota setting, and lead generation. I would meet with our client teams to understand how we could improve our products to better support them. Deko said, ‘Great, so do that. You’re the Head of Product; no one will wonder why you are focused on our customers.’ It seems so obvious now, but at the time it was a revelation. I did all these things, and my entire perspective changed. As far as Deko and I were concerned, this was my job. He held me fully responsible, and I had to learn how to lead through influence rather than authority.
• Transformed leadership team after implementing an “Inclusive Interview Rule,” which requires all hiring managers to interview a diverse slate of candidates for every leadership position.
HEADQUARTERS: Austin; co-headquarters, Stamford, Connecticut CEO SINCE: 2019
Two years later, when he named me president, responsible for both technology and revenue, I had been doing the job already and had to change almost nothing. I have used this advice with nearly everyone who is thinking about how to grow into their next opportunity.”
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Chris Hyams joined Indeed in 2010, when the company had just 130 employees, as VP of Product. Today, now that he is CEO, the company has grown to over 12,200 employees across the globe. Before he was championing Indeed’s mission to help people get jobs,
• Introduced Indeed Flex, a new e-staffing mobile app that allows job seekers to book a shift at the push of a button and get paid directly by Indeed.
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “The Texas CEO I admire most is Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette, president and CEO of Huston-Tillotson University, a Historically Black University (HBCU), and Austin’s oldest institution of higher learning.”
• In 2022 so far, helped over one million job seekers facing barriers get jobs (e.g., those with no college degree, long-term unemployed, military veteran, formerly incarcerated).
From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “I started at Indeed in 2010 as the Head of Product. A few years into the role, our then CEO Hisayuki ‘Deko’ Idekoba told me that someday he might ask me to take on responsibility for the client and revenue side of business as well. I asked him how I might prepare for that. He said, ‘That’s easy. When you come to work on Monday, pretend that’s your job. What would you do?’
CHRIS HYAMS CEO, Indeed
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “My job is the chief mission officer, reminding every Indeedian every single day that our mission is to help people get jobs.”
• In Q1 of 2022, helped 20 people get a job every single minute, compared to 10 per minute in Q1 of 2019.
Hyams also does a weekly Q&A with the company’s COO, does a weekly podcast where he talks with an Indeed employee, and frequently has breakfast or lunch with a random group of three to five Indeed employees.
What Employees Say about Indeed Leadership “They overcommunicate so everyone truly understands the direction the organization is moving in. Great team!” Feature
invested through capex and acquisitions
42 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Servant leader; intentional, committed, and accountable.”
return From
growth •
Recent Company Milestones • Improved safety and continued COVID-related employee support • 13 percent revenue growth and 20 percent free cash
you
Your leadership philosophy summarized? “Trust and earn the respect from your people by being transparent, decisive, and willing to make (and explain why) the tough decisions.”
What Employees Say about Waste Connections Leadership “[Company] leaders are trained to lead from a servant’s heart. They are passionate and motivated to do right for their people and their company. Waste Connections often looks and feels more like a well-functioning family than a corporation, and yet it continues healthy shareholder returns.”
34 percent total
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT MARY KAY LEADERSHIP “Lots of leadership opportunities and potential to grow. They lead us daily and provide training frequently.” TEXAS CEO PICK
“ ‘People will support that which they help create.’ That was one of the many mottos of our founder, Mary Kay Ash, when she started her company nearly 60 years ago. It’s became one of our guiding principles at Mary Kay—if our employees come to work every day convinced they’re helping make the world a better place, then we’re on the right track.”
Worthing Jackman, who grew up in New Orleans, came to Waste Connections almost 20 years ago with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a decade of investment banking experience at Deutsche Bank Securities. He held several leadership positions at Waste Connections, including CFO and president, before being appointed CEO in 2019. He also serves as a director of Quanta Services, Inc. Of course, the waste business doesn’t stop for pandemics, so Jackman had the task of leading the company through the upheaval. He noted on the Nothing Wasted podcast that Waste Connections had 99 percent employee attendance through COVID-19, which he calls “remarkable,” and that they put around $40 million into wages, wellness, and health support for employees. “Our culture is one of servant leadership ... It’s an inverted pyramid that puts the frontline on top. And we have to prove ourselves to our employees and their families every single day.” flow $1.8 billion
• shareholder the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “The less relevant you make your position by developing and advancing others, the more relevant become to the company.”
WORTHING JACKMAN President & CEO, Waste Connections HEADQUARTERS: Spring CEO SINCE: 2019 DAVID HOLL CHAIRMAN & CEO Mary Kay Inc., one of the largest direct sellers of skin care and color cosmetics in the world HEADQUARTERS: Addison FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
• Successfully launched a new fare class called Wanna Get Away Plus, a new fare product that offers more flexibility, options, and rewards.
Your leadership philosophy summarized? “My leadership philosophy is to be very collaborative, almost ‘coach-like,’ listening to managers and supporting their initiatives with questions and suggestions rather than being overly directive.”
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “Never let a lack of data prevent you from making a decision. Leaders often have to make decisions and take action without perfect information.”
“They are always thinking of ways to make our company profitable and passing those profits down the line.”
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Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Michael Dell.”
What Employees Say about Southwest Leadership
BOB JORDAN CEO, Southwest Airlines
DAVID LESNIAK CEO Personiv, provider for more than 30 years of services that help businesses run more efficiently through high-quality and costeffective outsourcing HEADQUARTERS: Austin RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
TEXAS CEO PICK Texas CEO Magazine’s Q2 2022 cover story featured this CEO’s transition into leadership at one of the country’s most iconic brands (“Bob Jordan Takes Flight,” Q2 2022). Bob Jordan has held 15 different roles at Southwest and been responsible for the delivery of many key company initiatives, including executive oversight for development of the Southwest. com e-commerce platform, the revamp of the Rapid Rewards loyalty program in 2011, the $3.2 billion acquisition and integration of AirTran Airways, the comprehensive “Heart” brand refresh in 2014, significant domestic and international network expansion, and the 2017 switch to a new reservations system. Jordan is a proud former student of Texas A&M University, having earned an undergraduate degree in computer science and a master’s degree in business administration. Like his mentor and Southwest’s previous CEO Gary Kelly, Jordan places great emphasis on taking care of the people who keep the company running day to day. “Our employees have a warrior spirit,” he told us. “They push through and making things happen. We owe them two things: the tools that they need to do their job in the best way possible and the tools to be as efficient as we can.”
“I think we have some of the best leadership out there—they strive to create a corporate culture of professional development and being human that’s genuine and gives back to the community. Performance expectations are clear and the working environment is welcoming.”
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT PERSONIV LEADERSHIP
HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2022 Feature
• Personiv successfully sold to a strategic acquirer, eClerx, in late 2020.
From the CEO Bob often quotes advice he received from former SWA CEO Gary Kelly, “If the people aspect of your business doesn’t keep you up at night, you need to get out of leadership.”
Recent Company Milestones
• Logan was joined by chairman and founder Gordon Logan and 17 others who had their heads shaved as a show of renewed commitment to St. Baldrick’s Foundation, the largest private funder of childhood cancer research grants, with another $1 million donation over the next three years.
• The only national haircare service provider with more locations now than in 2019. On track to have its highest number of store openings this year since 2018.
Recent Company Milestones
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• Franchisees entering the system are coming from the most diverse backgrounds to date, with an increase in veteran franchisees since 2020, who now represent 12 percent of the system.
From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
“
• Sport Clips, its clients, and product partners reached a $10 million milestone in donations to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation (VFW) to fund VFW’s Sport Clips Help A Hero Scholarships by fundraising and donating $1.5 million in 2021.
EDWARD LOGAN CEO & President, Sport Clips
HEADQUARTERS: Georgetown CEO SINCE: 2020
‘Get comfortable being uncomfortable.’
When I was a recent college grad in management consulting, I was brought onto a technology strategy project for one of the 10 largest companies in the US. I approached the managing partner on the project to make sure we were aligned on expectations. I wanted to make it clear that I had no experience on a project like that and to make sure he still wanted me on it. He explained to me that even with all his experience, it is important to lean on peers and previously existing knowledge to leverage yourself, and most importantly that anyone who wants unusual levels of success can only do so if they are constantly growing and achieving things that are unusual to achieve. This means there is Though he only took the CEO reins in 2020, Edward Logan has worked at Sport Clips since 2010—and been involved with the business much longer. His parents, Gordon and Bettye Logan, founded the company in the early 1990s in Austin when they saw a gap in the market for men and boys’ haircuts. Logan, who studied finance at SMU and spent time as a Deloitte consultant in Dallas soon thereafter, began at Sport Clips operating one store and leading special projects. He then expanded the footprint from one market, 14 stores, and little infrastructure when he joined, to six markets, 70 stores, and a highly successful and tenured management team. He began his tenure on the executive leadership team as vice president of operations for all 1,800 locations. Later, as COO, he led day-to-day operations across the entire support team. In 2020, he was named CEO of the brand. It was not an easy time to take the helm of a business providing in-person services, but Logan helped the company and its franchisees navigate the pandemic successfully. Nearly all stores had resumed operations, with safety measures in place, by October 2020. Sport Clips now has more than 1,900 stores across the United States and Canada. It was founded on Coach Lou Holtz’s “Heart of a Champion” philosophies: “Do your best; do what’s right; and treat others the way they want to be treated.”
What Employees Say about Sport Clips Leadership “The leadership team I work with is truly invested in the growth and success of each of us! They provide opportunities and paths for us to make Sport Clips more than just another job, but a career.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO?
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT HILTI NORTH AMERICA LEADERSHIP “Hilti North America focuses on employees first and that carries over to the employees focus on customers and service.” TEXAS CEO PICK Feature
“There are so many Texas CEOs I admire and learn from constantly. When I was very young, I asked John Paul DeJoria (co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems) his advice on becoming successful, and he didn’t think twice in sharing with me that successful people do what others are unwilling to do to achieve what others don’t. My father, Gordon Logan, is one of the most admired CEOs around, and I have learned so much from him over many years of mentorship. I will share with you the story of a CEO I admire and have gotten to know better only recently. Rob Holmes is the CEO of Texas Capital Bank, who Sport Clips now banks with as well. In getting to know Rob and the organization, we have very similar beliefs and strategies, which is interesting given our different industries. We believe in bringing on the absolute best talent as the priority, setting ambitious goals that prepare you well for long-term sustainable success, applying technology as an accelerator and adding new capabilities to the organization, while remaining focused on operational excellence at the core of your business and on the human relationship aspect of business as the foundation above all else. On a more personal note, Rob and I recently inspired each other around our personal and organizational philanthropic efforts. I got on stage at Sport Clips’ national convention recently and had my head shaved to raise money and support for St. Baldrick’s Foundation, an organization committed to funding research focused on childhood cancer treatment. Rob also got on stage at TCB’s company town hall and shaved his head to raise funds and support for the American Cancer Society to drive their activity within Texas. I had the honor of being the one to shave his head there, though I think now he realizes that just because I’m in the hair industry does not mean I’m the one you want giving you a haircut!”
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likely no playbook and it will be challenging, but achieving success that is perceived as unusual is what sets you apart. If you’re not outside your comfort zone, you’re not growing and learning, and you effectively disqualify yourself from ever achieving anything new.”
“ ‘Make It Happen.’ It is every leader’s job to get results and make things happen that wouldn’t happen otherwise, and to do so through and alongside other people.”
MARTINA McISAAC REGION HEAD & CEO Hilti North America, a global leader in providing technology to make construction faster, safer, and more sustainable HEADQUARTERS: Plano RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence?
• McIsaac served as 2022 chair of the Dallas Habitat Women Build initiative to support women and families who are beginning a journey to financial independence and generational assets through education and first home ownership.
• Named a Best Place to Work for 2022, the No. 19 Best Large Workplace in Texas from Great Place to Work / Fortune magazine, and a 2021 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in the US.
• Announced $100,000 Grant for The Jed Foundation to provide mental health resources and programming for underresourced schools.
• Opened 22 retail stores and counting in the past year.
BRYCE MADDOCK CEO & Cofounder, TaskUs HEADQUARTERS: New Braunfels CEO SINCE: 2008 TOM NOLAN CEO Kendra Scott, a leading fashion accessories brand inspired by the personal experiences, travel and sense of community of its founder and designer, Kendra Scott
Bryce Maddock and his best friend, Jasper Weir, have been entrepreneurs since their teenage years, when they sold designer belts at Santa Monica High School. After a foray into the events business, they invested their combined savings into TaskUs. Today the company is a leader in digital outsourcing and content moderation, with a client list that includes companies like Facebook and Doordash. Since 2008, the company has grown from seven employees to more than 45,800 today—thanks in part to its people-first business strategy. TaskUs filed to become a publicly traded company in June 2021, posting a valuation of up to $2.3 billion.
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT KENDRA SCOTT LEADERSHIP “Leadership team is always accessible and has monthly family meetings with the home office and monthly meetings with managers and directors. Incredible experience since most companies at entry level don’t even see the executive.”
TEXAS CEO PICK
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “Seth Waugh, former CEO of Deutsche Bank and current CEO of the PGA of America, once told me that all great leaders are simply great teachers and coaches. ... It’s never about the person in charge; the focus is on the people working with them that achieve great results.” Your leadership philosophy summarized? “You’ve got to remember that no matter your role in an organization, you’re always a part of a team. How you act, think, and speak directly affects your teammates. Are you constantly inspiring the best in others?”
From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “To understand your business, do the job of the lowest paid, entry-level member of the team. At TaskUs, all leaders spend a day on the frontline every year—working side by side and learning from our teammates.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble and Chris Hyams of Indeed.”
What Employees Say about TaskUs Leadership “Deeply concerned with your personal welfare. They are also very open to diversity and respects you for who you are. I also like the fact that our leaders also include women and LGBTIQIA+. Loving that representation!”
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Frontline first: a business is only as strong as the people who are doing the work every day.”
• Entered new product categories, including Men’s (Scott Bros. by Kendra Scott), Watches, and Engagement.
• Launched the Take the Time initiative, establishing Mother’s Day as a paid corporate holiday for all employees.
HEADQUARTERS: Austin RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
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Your leadership philosophy summarized?
“I admire many CEOs in Texas, including Peter Beck and Cynt Marshall, who are also great friends. Peter is my predecessor. He chose me to be Beck’s next CEO early in my career. At Beck, we call our succession strategy ‘the long handoff,’ and Peter guided me during our handoff and supported me for many years to ensure our collective success. Cynt is one of a kind. She’s done great work with the Dallas Mavs during the organization’s most challenging times. Her ‘pure heart, clear head and steady hand’ is not only what the Mavs need, but our greater Dallas community needs to be great.”
What Employees Say about Baylor Scott & White Health Leadership “They are ever present at our facility, and you feel like you are a part of their team, not just someone that reports to them. It is amazing to have such caring, personal, and involved executive leaders. We are truly blessed!”
FRED PERPALL CEO The Beck Group, a firm that integrates architecture, construction, sustainability, and technology to transform how its clients’ design and build
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT BECK GROUP LEADERSHIP “They share what’s going on and how we will be successful!”
• Awarded two significant design projects last July by the Bahamas’ Ministry of Health to expand and upgrade Rand Memorial Hospital in Grand Bahama and Princess Margaret Hospital in New Providence. Perpall was born in Princess Margaret.
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO?
TEXAS CEO PICK Peter McCanna was appointed CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health earlier this year, though he has served as the company’s president since 2017.
The Office of the President was created when then-CEO James Hinton recruited him to join the organization. Previously, McCanna served as the executive vice president and COO at Northwestern Memorial Healthcare in Chicago, as CFO at Presbyterian Healthcare Services in New Mexico, and as CGO at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver. During his 15 years at Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, he helped grow operating revenue from $700 million to more than $5 billion. McCanna is now CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest notfor-profit health system in Texas with 52 hospitals and more than 800 patient care sites, 7,300 active physicians, and 49,000 employees. In advance of taking on the role, he did extensive preparation. “I’ve been very intentional and did a lot of research on becoming a new CEO, particularly an internal candidate for CEO,” he told The Academy Table podcast of the Health Management Academy earlier this year.
“For me, it’s about servant leadership. My purpose is to serve and support my team and community to effect the most significant change in everyone’s lives.”
PETER McCANNA CEO, Baylor Scott & White Health HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2022 Feature
HEADQUARTERS: Dallas RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
From the CEO “If you treat the organization as if it were your family business, that leads you to the right decisions all the time,” McCanna told an internal publication of Baylor Scott & White Health.
• “The swiftest way to build a great company is to develop the greatness within your people.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Elon Musk.”
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
As of October 2021, it officially does so from Austin, Texas, after Musk announced the company’s headquarters move from Palo Alto, California, to its under-construction Gigafactory in southeast Travis County on a shareholder call. Tulsa and Nashville had been on the shortlist of relocation destinations, but in the end the Texas capital won the day. Now, Tesla will invest billions in Texas and create about 20,000 direct jobs, with the indirect jobs created numbering far higher. In April, the Austin Gigafactory and new headquarters, at an astounding 10 million square feet, opened with a blowout party.
When Texas CEO Magazine speaks with Texas CEOs, one question we often ask is what fellow CEO in the state they admire most (including in this issue). The most common answer: Elon Musk. Controversies notwithstanding, he remains an inspiration to business leaders across the state. From the CEO “People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.”
What Employees Say about Tesla Leadership “The leadership of the team is amazing. Everyone has the opportunity of doing whatever is needed in order to achieve their tasks. No idea is a bad one.”
The one-of-a-kind innovator, the media enfant terrible, the man who recently made a big bet on Texas—Elon Musk has been unceasingly in the news this year under a variety of guises. Musk has a lot of spinning plates, from SpaceX to the Boring Company to his involvement in Twitter. But his biggest Texas presence is Tesla, maker of electric vehicles and other energy products, founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2004, Musk made a $6.5 million investment in Tesla, becoming its largest shareholder, and subsequently took the helm as CEO in 2008. Tesla operates with a mission to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
• Achieved a record growth year for the Infiniux group of companies and delivered on customer commitments despite the pandemic, a global supply chain challenges, and a severe labor shortage.
• “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” Your leadership philosophy summarized? “Servant leadership: I am their leader. I must follow them.”
• “Where focus goes, energy flows.”
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT INFINIUX LEADERSHIP “We have an open concept, and our CEO and executives are approachable. We are encouraged to speak up about ideas, and the environment is welcoming for any feedback. I feel like they just want everyone to be at their best because that will only fuel the business to be at its best.”
HEADQUARTERS: Frisco RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
GABY SALIBY CEO The Infiniux group, telecommunicationsincludingcompanies Nexius, Velex, Velex SI, AccuV, MyndCo, Intelgica, and Allios
ELON MUSK CEO, Tesla HEADQUARTERS: Austin CEO SINCE: 2008
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TEXAS CEO PICK
What Employees Say about symplr Leadership “The availability and quality of communication from BJ and the executive team have been light years ahead of the two Fortune 500 companies I worked with in the past.”
Recent Company Milestones
• Unified seven companies, bringing symplr almost 1,400 new team members and enabling it to become the enterprise healthcare operations category leader.
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Common sense sometimes trumps pure intellect.”
• Added feature functionality and value drivers for healthcare system, payer, and post-acute facility customers and enabled them to take better care of patients by making healthcare operations simpler.
BJ SCHAKNOWSKI CEO, symplr HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2020 From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “During my time in the Marine Corps, they trained me on this leadership concept of simplification and prioritization. That rang true with me and stuck with me, and I have applied it throughout my career aligning entire organizations around goals. In the military, you would call it your mission and establish a ruthless prioritization of the things that matter—the cause and the people. If you are taking care of those two things—accomplishing your mission and taking care of people—then frankly, you are getting the big things right. I have tried to embrace that concept and apply that to my 20-plus year software career.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “It would have to be Rick Pleczko, CEO of symplr for many years before me. He came up with the idea of consolidating this fragmented market of healthcare operations and GRC [governance, risk management, and compliance] companies into a market leader to the benefit of the stakeholders in healthcare. I still look up to Rick and talk to him every single month.”
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BJ Schaknowski is a seasoned software industry executive, with over 20 years of experience in leadership roles across a wide variety of functions. He grew up in upstate New York, then joined the Marines during college. After that, he began a career in tech, holding leadership roles at LexisNexis Software Solutions, CA Technologies, Intuit, Sage Software, and Vertafore, where he was chief sales and marketing officer. He has also earned an MBA from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. In 2020, Schaknowski was appointed to his first CEO role, at symplr, which makes a SaaS platform for governance, risk management, and compliance in the healthcare industry. Today, its products are deployed at 9 out of 10 US hospitals. In this CEO role, Schaknowski sees himself as not only a business leaders but as a cultural one too, noting that employees of symplr are often driven by a real passion for improving healthcare operations—and the lives of providers and patients.
Shootman brought with him over two decades of executive leadership in the tech arena. Most recently, he served as CEO of Workfront, where he more than doubled revenue in five years by repositioning the company from a departmental project application to an enterprise application platform. Before joining Workfront, Shootman served as president of Apptio, and before that, he was president of Eloqua and a member of the team that helped bring Eloqua to a successful public offering. Shootman has also held executive leadership positions with Vignette, TeleTech, BMC Software, and IBM. He is the author of Done Right: How Tomorrow’s Top Leaders Get Stuff Done, in which he wrote, “While executives, shareholders, and customers demand value, your team is starving to create something greater than themselves. The onus falls on every leader to radically rethink how they empower their teams to execute and deliver value in the Digital Era.”
• Named by Ethisphere as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies nine years in a row.
• Acquired a 60 percent ownership interest in Turner & Townsend Holdings Limited, a global leader in program management, project management, and cost consulting.
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT CBRE LEADERSHIP “[The leadership team offered] great support during the pandemic to the needy and tracking back on the health and safety of the employee.” “They live the core values RISE [respect, integrity, service, and excellence].”
HEADQUARTERS: Dallas RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
• Announced commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
ALEX SHOOTMAN CEO, Alkami Technology
HEADQUARTERS: Plano CEO SINCE: 2021 BOB SULENTIC PRESIDENT & CEO CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm
What Employees Say about Alkami Leadership “They go out of their way to make employees feel appreciated and cared for, both from a office/tech/tools perspective, but also a lot of mental/ personal empathy when it comes to time off, counseling opportunities, massage bookings, and various parties through the year.”
TEXAS CEO PICK
50 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
From the CEO “It’s the leader’s responsibility to do a self-assessment to say, ‘How am I doing on integrity, intent, capability, and results?,’ ” Shootman told the Leaders24x7 podcast. “Because if I’m not doing well on any of those, then I can’t be offended if my organization doesn’t trust me. If you’re a brandnew leader going into an organization, you have no results yet in that organization. You need to understand that your people don’t yet trust you.”
• Launched $7+ million community impact initiative. FROM THE CEO Your leadership philosophy summarized? “One of the great things any person can do in their life is hold themselves accountable for doing the things they say they are going to do.”
Alex Shootman came to Alkami, a provider of cloud-based digital banking solutions, in 2021 as CEO and member of the board. He succeeded Mike Hansen, who helped take the company public (valued at the time at $3.43 billion) and remains on the company’s board of directors.
• Named by Forbes as one of the best large employers in America.
• Recognized for an Outstanding Diversity & Inclusion Organization by the Dallas Business Journal.
“My leadership is always making sure all employees have the necessities needed to complete their job well and efficiently. [They] not only appreciate me as an employee, but they also appreciate me as a person.”
CEO Paul Singh has a passion for building world-class healthcare organizations that deliver exceptional patient care experiences. Before becoming CEO of U.S. Dermatology Partners, he served as COO of NorthStar Anesthesia, a TPG-backed practice management company with 2,500+ teammates across 150+ facilities in 21 states and led its successful sale in 2018. Singh earned a BA in Economics with High Distinction from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
PAUL SINGH CEO, U.S. Dermatology Partners HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2018 From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “The greatest gift you can give someone is to set clear expectations on what it means for them to be successful in their role.”
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Recent Company Milestones
What Employees Say about U.S. Dermatology Partners Leadership
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Elon Musk. He is a visionary who is fundamentally changing a number of industries.”
• Recently launched its Outreach Program to provide underserved and rural communities with critical access to dermatology care. This new program will open 30 new locations in rural communities across eight states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia) in the next three years to address the ongoing shortage of doctors and specialists in underserved areas.
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Clearly communicate where we are headed and why, surround myself with great leaders who are passionate about achieving this shared vision, and stay out of the way!”
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U.S. Dermatology Partners is one of the largest dermatology practices in the country, caring for more than 1.5 million patients each year with more than 1,800 teammates across 90-plus locations across eight states.
What Employees Say about Bell Leadership “Leadership at Bell does a very good job of caring for their employees. I’ve heard it said many times at Bell that ‘family comes first,’ and I believe Bell does a great job of the work-life balance and ensuring that work does not consume employees’ lives, while still performing at our best.”
MITCH SNYDER President & CEO, Bell HEADQUARTERS: Fort Worth CEO SINCE: 2015 From the CEO “Our value proposition [to employees] has to be more than ‘Hey, I can pay you more,’ ” Snyder said in a Center for Strategic and International Studies roundtable in 2020. “How often do you get to design brand new platforms that the Army is going to fly for the next 40 years? It’s the excitement of what you’re doing and the excitement of the mission that’s still drawing [talent to Bell].”
When it was founded in 1935, Bell made primarily fighter aircraft, including many that would be used in WWII. Perhaps the most famous of its products of that era was the Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft. In addition to breaking the sound barrier with the Bell X-1, the company was also the first company to certify a commercial helicopter, and it took part in NASA’s first lunar mission. Nearly 90 years later, now a fully owned subsidiary, Bell is still thriving, with a presence on six continents and strong military and commercial sides of its multibillion-dollar business. Bell is currently led by Mitch Snyder, who also serves on Textron’s corporate leadership team. The Kansas native came to Bell in 2004 after excelling in leadership positions at Lockheed Martin, in functions including engineering, business development, manufacturing, and the F-16 Program Office. Before being named CEO in October 2015, Snyder was executive vice president of Military Business and responsible for guiding the strategic direction, management, and performance of Bell’s government programs. As a leader, work-life balance is critical to Snyder—not only his own but his employees’. Bell offers a 9/80 work schedule, in which employees get every other Friday off in exchange for working 9-hour days for four days of the workweek. Snyder works on being transparent and communicative as well: Every other week, Snyder has a 90-minute discussion event with all 400 leaders at Bell, a rhythm that went up to twice a week during the disruptions of COVID-19. Bell was declared an essential business, and Snyder made it a priority to see that the business continued to execute when ensuring that all employees were safe.
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He now leads Togolf, a tech-enabled driving range that’s paired with a full-service restaurant and bar. The company was founded in 2000 in Watford, outside London. The first US location to take off was the Dallas Topgolf, and the company officially moved its headquarters there in 2012. Today, Topgolf has 77 outdoor venues in six countries (US, UK, Australia, Mexico, Dubai, and Germany), after opening nine new venues in 2021 and three so far in 2022. Under construction currently are venues China, Thailand, and Scotland.
What Employees Say about Topgolf Leadership “Leadership listens! The door or floor is always open, and their ears are always keen to the needs of teams they lead.”
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• On April 15, 2022, opened 76th global venue in El Segundo, California, which includes a refreshed 10-hole, par-3 golf course (its first green grass course) adjacent to the venue.
ARTIE STARRS CEO, Topgolf HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2021 From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “My dad, Art Starrs, and Yum! CEO David Gibbs both told me that every leader you look up to or aspire to be likely had the same fears you have. The ones who rise to the top humbly embrace their strengths to combat the fears. It’s a daily discipline.”
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• Announced a 10-year partnership with St Andrews Links in Scotland, considered the “Home of Golf.” The company’s Toptracer technology will be installed at St Andrews Links, where the game of golf has been played since the 15th century.
• In May 2021, joined Callaway and Women’s Golf Day to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Artie Starrs came to Topgolf last year from Yum! Brands, where he most recently served as Global CEO for Pizza Hut, overseeing its 18,000 locations across 110 countries. Before that, he served president of Pizza Hut US and as chief financial officer for Rave Cinemas.
• Completed merger with Callaway Golf Company (NYSE: ELY) in 2021.
Recent Company Milestones
• World Golf Tour (WGT) virtual game downloaded more than 35 million times.
FROM THE CEO Best leadership advice you ever got?
54 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
• Became a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq stock exchange as of May 27, 2022.
DALLAS TANNER
What Employees Say about Invitation Homes Leadership “They not only present our company’s goals and values to us, but they also live them—our leadership team leads by example.”
TERRY WEBER CEO Biote, a hormone optimization company that has translated over 80 years of scientific insight into clinically validated medical approaches
WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY ABOUT BIOTE LEADERSHIP “The leadership team at Biote knows my name and is interested in listening to my thoughts on how to improve or advance the business.”
TEXAS CEO PICK
Dallas Tanner is a founding member of Invitation Homes’ business, first serving as executive vice president and chief investment officer starting in 2012, and from August 2018 to January 2019 as interim president. In 2019, he was appointed CEO. Invitation Homes, a single-family home leasing company, went public in 2017 and celebrated 10 years in business last April.
HEADQUARTERS: Irving RECENT COMPANY MILESTONES
Tanner currently serves on the HOPE Global Board of Advisors, the Policy Advisory Board of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the Real Estate Roundtable. He is actively involved in American Indian Services and served as a missionary in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Your leadership philosophy summarized? “Trust your lieutenants. The only way to grow and thrive in your career is by surrounding yourself with highly capable people and giving them the space to excel at what they do.”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Jan Langbein, the CEO of Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support. She has been leading and growing this significant non-profit for 30 years. She is a US senior policy advisor on violence against women and represents Texas brilliantly.”
From the CEO Best leadership advice you ever got? “Act like you’ve been there before. And stay focused on the details.”
“My father, who was a battalion commander in the armed forces, is a major inspiration to me as a leader—he left his legal career to join the US Army. From him, I learned how to humbly lead and ‘never BS the troops.’ ”
Most-admired fellow Texas CEO? “Recently retired Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, for his relentless focus on customer experience.”
Cofounder, President & CEO, Invitation Homes HEADQUARTERS: Dallas CEO SINCE: 2019
Your leadership philosophy summarized in a sentence? “Collaborative and anxiously engaged in good causes.”
1 Harvard Business Review, “Why Chief Human Resources Officers Make Great CEOs,” December 2014.
A CPO advances this aim by listening to the needs and objectives of employees and the organization continuously and simultaneously, while also monitoring the market and other variables that may impact the organization’s ability to attract and retain talent moving forward. We saw this acutely throughout the pandemic in the way of new work models and creative strategies for accommodating work-life integration amid the unprecedented disruption. We also see the CPO’s support of employee engagement through the development and deployment of foundational programs, practices, and processes that best address the collective needs noted above. This includes areas such as performance management, learning and development, career pathing, succession planning, and more.
A Culture Carrier and Brand Builder
The challenges of attracting and retaining top talent and achieving full employee engagement are not going away for businesses. Finding a competitive advantage in how they cope with these challenges is why more and more organizations are recognizing the value of having a CPO or CHRO as part of their executive teams. An effective CPO serves as the trusted advisor and experienced leader needed to assess and bring about what the organization needs from a people perspective to meet today’s objectives and capitalize on tomorrow’s opportunities.
Moving Business Forward
4 PathMotion, “Everything You Need to Improve Candidate https://pathmotion.com/resources/everything-you-need-to-improve-candidate-experience.Experience,”
3 CareerArc, 2021 Future of Recruiting Study.
An Enabler of Business Strategy In a Harvard Business Review article, management consultant Ellie Filler positions the CPO as the person who “enables the business strategy.”1 The best CPOs are strategic thinkers that focus primarily on shaping the direction of their organization’s people-focused efforts while leaving tactical matters to their team and downstream managers. The CPO’s executive-team presence is critical because people affect every function. The CPO listens to the challenges, concerns, needs, and opportunities of the broader leadership team and acts as a valued partner in helping them accomplish their objectives. Succeeding in this requires the CPO to have good working relationships, strong communication skills, high business involvement, operational savviness, and high emotional intelligence. When John Bilbrey became CEO of Hershey, he brought on and forged a close working relationship with a CHRO whom he tasked heavily with carrying out, communicating, and reinforcing his vision for strengthening the company and its people. This played a pivotal role in the company’s soon-to-be-found success. Reuters reports that during Bilbrey’s five-year tenure as CEO, “Hershey doubled its market value to $20 billion, improved its profit margins, and increased its market share in the United States to 31.3 percent from 28.3 percent” while also diversifying its business.2
The CPO’s impact on culture manifests itself in myriad ways through how the organization approaches hiring processes, candidate profiles, development programs, communication practices, performance management and more. An important aspect of these collective components is how they work together to instill and reinforce desired behaviors across the organization so that they become the norm. A CPO’s work in building a strong culture also goes hand-in hand with building a strong employer brand to attract new talent and retain existing employees. CareerArc found that “82% of people consider the company’s reputation and employer brand” before applying for a job.3 Meanwhile, PathMotion notes that 57% of candidates are unable to find “information about the role and what it’s like to work at your company.”4 This is a gap a CPO can fill.
Paul Hagerty, PHR, SHRM-SCP, Sr. People Operations/HR Consultant, vcfo
The role and impact of the Chief People Officer (CPO) or Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) has continued to evolve since its emergence some two decades ago. Its origins marked a break from the traditional view of HR as primarily a tactical and administrative function to instead recognizing it as an indispensable part of the C-suite. That view has only grown as businesses face unprecedented challenges and historically tight talent pools. Here, we examine key aspects of the CPO role and why it’s now more important than ever.
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2 Greg Roumeliotis, Lauren Hirsch, “Hershey Begins CEO Search as Bilbrey Announces Retirement,” Reuters, October 13, 2016.
A Primary Purpose of People People power organizations. Realizing the full potential of that power requires putting the right people in the right roles for the right reasons. For the CPO, this means shaping and carrying out a strategic plan that unlocks that people potential via a high level of employee engagement.
Every business seeks to be an entity that people want to be associated with, want to work for, and want to grow alongside. How well an organization meets these measures depends largely on the strength of its organizational culture and brand. Culture starts with leadership articulating and establishing the values, expectations, and practices it wants the organization and its employees to be known for. The CPO acts as a key vehicle for carrying and embedding those cultural attributes across the business.
Employee engagement itself has been a tough-to-define concept for many. Blessing White’s “X Model of Engagement” frames full engagement as the intersection where employees are getting everything they need and want from the organization and, at the same time, the organization is receiving maximum contribution from its employees.
The ImportanceIncreasingoftheChiefPeople Officer
Paul Hagerty is a Sr. People Operations/HR Consultant with the financial consulting firm vcfo, founded in 1996 and headquartered in Austin. vcfo is celebrating its 26th year serving over 5,000 clients nationwide, providing an integrated suite of Finance, Accounting, and HR support.
In this issue, we are prominently honoring CEOs who have earned the respect of their workforces (p. 30). There are countless ways to show employees that you respect and care about them, but one particular way to support their well-being is to ensure that parenthood does not come into direct conflict with the expectations of work. Companies that ignore the needs of working parents will increasingly find themselves losing out on key talent. That’s why The Best Place for Working Parents offers competitive designations to employers in Texas who have prioritized family-friendly policies. (See the full list of 2022 Texas designees on p. 64.) Here are 10 research-backed, family-friendly policies identified by The Best Place for Working Parents as significant contributors to the satisfaction and retention of workers with children. Though many of these policies are low-cost, each can contribute significantly to the lives of employees—and the company’s bottom line.
PARENT –FRIENDLY
M. Ray Perryman REIMAGINING THE
WORKPLACE
58 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 PEOPLE COME HERE TO WORK, BUT WE WANT WORK TO BE A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN GET REJUVENATED — PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, EMOTIONALLY. A LOT OF OUR EMPLOYEES HAVE COME IN AND SAID, ‘THIS IS THE GREATEST PLACE I’VE EVER WORKED, BECAUSE I REALLY FEEL LIKE I CAN GET THE SUPPORT I NEED.’ ... WE WANT EVERY PART OF YOU TO BE WELL, BODY AND MIND. WE WANT IT ALL TO WORK TOGETHER.” Ollie Malone Jr. Vice President of Human Resources Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Recipient of the 2021 Best Place for Working Parents® Innovator Awards
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Forward-thinking companies understand that their support for working parents on staff is a key driver of talent retention, positive company culture, and profitability. Here are the top 10 research-backed policies identified by The Best Place for Working Parents that companies can implement to capture these benefits.
10 FAMILY-FRIENDLY POLICIES
Source: Glassdoor, FRACTL Unlimited vacation time eliminates vacation liability for companies an average of $1,898 per employee.
#2: Paid Time Off Plummer, an environmental consulting firm with locations across Texas, goes beyond maternity and paternity leave, offering additional paid time off and bonuses to lessen the stress for new parents coming back to work. This includes an extra 80 hours of PTO for the primary caregiver, as well as a $3,000 parent retention bonus once the employee returns to doing 24 or more hours per week.
Chris Young CEO of Plummer | 160 employees “A company that invests in mothers is pretty special and one that I am proud to work for.” Allison W Employee of Plummer 80 percent of employees would choose additional benefits over a pay raise.
Source: Glassdoor, FRACTL
“At Plummer, being a great place to work is literally part of our vision statement, and family-friendly policies are a big part of realizing that vision. For us, this means anticipating that our employees who are mothers and fathers will likely need additional support when they welcome a new child. This thoughtful approach has not only been the right thing to do, but ultimately has helped us retain incredible talent and attract other employees who know that we provide a supportive, family-friendly culture.”
#1: Company-Paid Healthcare Coverage If your organization can manage to provide healthcare coverage that extends to dependents, you will offer significant stability to the households of employees with young children. Child Care Associates, based in Fort Worth, offers dental, medical, and vision coverage to its employees, although paid health insurance is uncommon in the child care field. Employees who complete three wellness initiatives throughout the year can also receive lower premiums.
Kara Waddell CEO of Child Care Associates | 567 employees
“In trying to live out our values, we realized that we needed to have more family-friendly policies, including healthcare options for whole families and paid parental leave upon the birth or adoption of a child. Providing family-centered solutions goes hand-in-hand with our mission, but it also has proved to be a good HR decision.”
#4: Nursing Benefits At the initiative of two senior employees, Rogue Architects, a nationally licensed architectural firm specializing in restaurant and retain projects, created a “Zen Room” in the company’s building, built in 1905. The intention was to create a private space where nursing mothers could pump during the workday. The Zen Room has become a beloved office fixture, doubling as a space where employees can make private calls to family during the day. The room cost no more than $400 to create.
Betsy Price, former mayor of Fort Worth, championed a new parental leave policy for city workers that took effect in October 2020. Price notes that this was an important move for the city with the second-highest percentage of families with children in the nation. The policy offers six weeks of paid leave for maternity or paternity leave, applying to births and adoptions, and is not tied to tenure. “In order to have strong businesses, we need healthy employees and healthy families. It’s important that we modernize our HR policies to reflect the needs of working parents, because if they aren’t supported with benefits that recognize their commitment to work and their family, there will be other companies that will provide that critical support.”
“Exhibiting care for each other is woven into the Rogue Architects culture, and the creation of the Zen Room space was a shining example of how giving your leadership staff the tools and flexibility to prioritize the wellbeing of others often results in better, more innovative, and more inclusive solutions. By supporting moms, we were able to support everyone in the firm.”
Source: Impaq International and Institute for Women’s Policy Research
Kevin Finestead CEO/Owner of Rogue Architects | 567 employees
Betsy Price Former Mayor of the City of Fort Worth
#3: Parental Leave
First-time mothers who use some form of paid leave are 32 percent less likely to quit their jobs before or after childbirth and are 19 percent more likely to return to the same employer after leave.
Employers who support women who choose to breastfeed have more satisfied and loyal employees, which can also result in higher productivity.
Source: Science Direct The Zen Room at Rogue Architects.
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“We know that if our team members are happy and healthy, they perform better, and enjoy their work and lives more. As such, we are dedicated to finding creative ways to help our employees live their best lives—whether it’s providing child care for them, offering flexible hours, or something as simple as delivering dry cleaning to the office—so they can use their free time to be with family, take care of themselves, and live the lives they deserve.”
Source: Cornell University
The Miles Foundation, based in Fort Worth, endeavors to honor the legacy of its founder, Ellison Miles, through investments in education that promote the next generation’s success. “Offering a Dependent Care FSA [flexible spending accounts] cost virtually nothing for us to set up, but is an added layer of support for our working moms and dads. If they opt in, it’s a great way for them to use tax-free dollars toward a variety of child care, summer camp, babysitting, and other necessary costs working parents are expending every year.”
Source: Fortune Employers that offer Dependent Care FSAs can save up to $382.50 per employee. For an employer with 100 employees participating in the full $5,000 FSA, that employer would save $38,200 per year.
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Randy Eisenman, Cofounder/Managing Partner of Satori Capital | 31 employees
Satori Capital, a Dallas-based investment firm based on the principles of “conscious capitalism,” has been recognized as a “Best Company to Work For” on the national and local level. Satori’s Optimal Living Program is one initiative that has helped it earn these distinctions. It includes 25 days of PTO, plus a generous company holiday schedule, including the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s and Super Monday, the Monday after the Super Bowl. Employees are also offered healthy, chef-prepared lunches, gym membership reimbursement, backup child care, and other benefits.
Compared to their competitors, great workplaces win when it comes to revenue growth, employee retention, productivity, innovation, resilience, agility, customer service, and employee engagement.
#6: Child Care Assistance
#5: “Best Place” Designation
“We know that potential employees are interviewing us as much as we are interviewing them; in fact, we recently hired someone who sought us out specifically because we had been named a ‘Best Place to Work.’ ”
Cami Miller Employee of Satori Capital
Grant Coates President & CEO of The Miles Foundation Bring Your Kids to Work Day at Satori Capital.
Source: Early Care & Learning Council
#7: Onsite Child Care University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) in Fort Worth is one of the nation’s premier graduate academic medical centers. In 2018, in partnership with the Miles Foundation and Lena Pope, UNTHSC created a quality early learning center on its central Fort Worth campus for staff and students to better serve the needs of working parents and students with young children. UNTHSC employees and students with children ages six weeks to five years old are able to enroll for year-round 6:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m. care at the center on UNTHSC’s campus, guaranteeing up to 70 percent of slots for UNTHSC staff and student families.
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Source: BridgeCare An average business with 250 employees can save $75,000 per year in lost work time by subsidizing care for employees’ sick children. To make sure their children were taken care of, 67 percent of parents said they used a sick day, 56 percent were late to work, and 39 percent took a vacation day.
Dr. Michael Williams President of HSC
Mike Pavell Market President of Bank of America
“This collaboration was not only a major step for expanding access to high-quality, early childhood development in Fort Worth, but providing quality child care right here on campus was a major step toward fulfilling our HSC Best Place for All Initiative designed to grow a sustainable people culture by creating programs, policies, and a work environment that increase team member satisfaction and engagement.”
#8: Backup Child Care Bank of America is a company that ensures its employees have access to child care, even when the usual care systems are unavailable, as during school vacations, a child’s mild illness, an ill or unavailable caretaker, and more. The company provides each employee family an allowance of up to 40 days for child care (center-based or in-home) and 40 days of adult care (inhome) when their primary caregiver is temporarily unavailable. This program was expanded and streamlined during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure families had adequate care options through the significant disruptions that occurred.
When businesses provide childcare for employees, employee absences decrease by 30 percent and job turnover declines by as much as 60 percent.
“At Bank of America, we support our employees’ wellness— physical, emotional, and financial. We realize that managing personal and professional responsibilities can pose stressful challenges for many of our teammates. That’s why Bank of America offers a variety of benefits and resources, including expanding our back-up care to ensure that our teammates are taken care of so they can continue to best serve our clients.”
In addition, offices close at noon on Fridays. This low-cost policy has contributed to the firm’s high levels of retention and employee satisfaction.
Huckabee employee
Source: Werklabs Companies that allow remote work have 25 percent lower employee turnover than those that don’t.
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“Flexibility and focus on family. This is incredibly important to me and is one of the biggest reasons why I would promote Huckabee as a great place to work.”
#10: Remote Work If you have a knowledge-work job, you’re probably (still) doing a lot more remote work than you were before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. For First3Years, an Addison-based nonprofit that supports the healthy development of infants, toddlers, and their families, enthusiastically offering remote work options has been a key to retaining talent, especially for those employees with family commitments. Like an increasing number of companies, First3Years allows employees to work remotely with the option to access shared office space and no minimum use requirements. “We know how important it is for parents to be present for their children and families. First3Years values and respects workplace flexibility which creates space for staff to show up in their role more engaged and ready to collaborate. Providing individuals with an autonomous work environment produces self-motivated and dedicated staff resulting in increased levels of team productivity.”
Chris Huckabee CEO of Huckabee | 260 employees
#9: Flexible Hours
Ashley Borthick Interim CEO of First3Years | 16 employees Of the 30 percent of credentialed women who leave the workforce, 70 percent say they would have stayed if they had access to flexibility.
“Huckabee has always strived to offer more to our employees, even when we were a small company, because we knew it was the right thing to do for our employees and their families. Only later did we realize the significant impact that offering more family-friendly benefits makes on our bottom line as an organization. It’s been a joy to support our team and to see firsthand the way these practices have benefited our incredibly loyal, hard-working employees.”
Source: Owl Labs
At Huckabee, a top educational design and architecture firm with six offices across Texas, employees are trusted to complete their 40 hours per week in a way that makes sense for their schedules—a policy that immensely helps parents on staff.
64 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 The Best Place for Working Parents 2022 Designees Each year, BPFWP designates businesses that have prioritized supporting their employees who are also parents. Here are all of the Texas businesses that made the list so far in 2022. Austin, TX Large (≥1000) Austin Community College District Austin ISD Baylor University Boston Consulting Group Capital One City of Austin Dell Technologies Enverus IBM Kendra McCoy'sLOCALiQScottBuilding Supply McKinsey & Company National Instruments Corporation ProcoreNI Technologies Samsung Austin Semiconductor Superior HealthPlan Texas Workforce Commission Travis County Austin, TX Medium (201-999) ABC Home & Commercial Services AlertMedia Amplify Credit Union Austin Achieve Public Schools CommunitiesBumble In Schools of Central Texas Austin, TX Medium (201-999) DISCO Dunaway Associates Kerbey Lane Cafe Macmillan Learning TecovasSt.Rev.comRetailMeNotPatagoniaEdward'sUniversity Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations Texas Mutual Insurance Company Ulteig Engineers, Inc. University Federal Credit Union Velocity Credit Union Austin, TX Small (25-200) 4th Tap Brewing Cooperative 8th AffiniPayLight Antonelli's Cheese Shop Any Baby Can Austin American-Statesman Austin Board of REALTORS Austin Partners in Education Austin Private Wealth, LLC Austin Young BCLAVANCE-AustinChamberofTexas
65Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com Austin, TX Small (25-200) Board.org Britt Design Group Central Texas Autism Center Central Texas Food Bank Central Texas Pediatric Orthopedics Civilitude CognitOps Dillon Joyce Ltd E3 Alliance Elizabeth Christian Public Relations LLC Encotech Engineering Consultants, Inc. Endeavor Real Estate Group Enoch Kever PLLC Epoch FriendsCoffeeofthe Children Austin Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Hahn Public Communications INK Communications Co. KUT Public Media KVUE Live L'OcaOakD'Oro Marvel Marketers Maxwell Locke & Ritter Meals on Wheels Central Texas Notley Ventures Austin, TX Small (25-200) Office of U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett Olamaie Restaurant Holdings LLC Osano, Inc., a Public Benefit Corp Primrose School of Pflugerville Sage Recovery & Wellness Sana Shalom Austin St. David's Foundation StoryBuilt Texas Advocacy Project The 19th The Butler Bros The Center for Health, Work & Environment The Texas Tribune Thinkery Travis County ESD #2, Pflugerville Fire Department United Way for Greater Austin Verb, Inc. Walsh Gallegos Trevino Russo & Kyle, P.C. Wittliff WorkforceCutterSolutions Capital Area Worksmith, Inc. Austin, TX Micro (0-24) Angels Care & Learning Center Austin Area Research Organization Austin Community Foundation Bloom Communications
66 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 Austin, TX Micro (0-24) Brentwood Social House Casey's New Orleans Snowballs Con Mi DochenMADRERealtors Giving Austin Labor Support Leadership Austin M Group Agency Maven Strategic Consulting Simply SkimmerHomeInc. Texas Association for the Education of Young Children The Banks Group Todos Juntos Learning Center Tsen Engineering United Ways of Texas Dallas, TX Large (≥1000) Accenture American Airlines Arcosa, Inc. Brinker International Children's Health Dallas College Eisner Advisory Group, LLC Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Fossil Group, Inc Frost Brown Todd Hilti North HollyFrontierAmerica MatchKPMGJPMorganJacobsUS Pizza Hut Dallas, TX Large (≥1000) Thomson Reuters Toyota Motor North America University of North Texas System Dallas, TX Medium (201-999) BGSF BNSF Logistics Catalyst Corporate FCU CitySquareChildCareGroup Corgan Fortress Solutions Holmes Murphy SlalomSenderoOCC Suffolk Construction The Beck Group Turner Construction Company Dallas, TX Small (25-200) After School All Stars Allyn Media American College of Emergency Physicians Amp Creative AspenHR BarnesAustinCSI&Thornburg LLP Dallas Blitz Medical Billing Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL) Communities Foundation of Texas Cristo Rey Dallas Dallas Business Journal Dallas Regional Chamber The Best Place for Working Parents 2022 Designees
67Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com Dallas, TX Small (25-200) DoctorLogic, LLC Educational First Steps European Wax Center Everest Group First3Years Front Porch Marketing George W. Bush Presidential Center Grace Hebert Curtis Architects HNTB Corporation Link America LLC Mommies In Need Nasher Sculpture Center National Breast Cancer Foundation UnitedTruePointTheTheRealComReadersPeopleFun2LeadersSolutionsDallasFoundationVestedGroupCommunicationsWayofMetropolitan Dallas, Inc. Dallas, TX Micro (0-24) Bachman Lake Together Benchmark Search Group, LLC Dallas PeopleLeukemiaAfterschoolTexasPerformance Resources TenthstreetTannerySparkFarmCompanyllc Unique Software Development United to Learn El Paso, TX Large (≥1000) ADP El Paso Community College Helen of Troy The University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, TX Medium (201-999) Grant Associates El Paso, TX Small (25-200) City of Socorro, Texas El Paso CAP Project BRAVO, Inc. Howl MunozTransportationTrucking,Inc. Paso del Norte Children's Development Center United Way Of El Paso County Workforce Solutions Borderplex El Paso, TX Micro (0-24) El Paso Community Foundation Girl Scouts of the Desert Southwest Kelly Center for Hunger Relief Lazo OfficeLightningManagementHypnosisofCongresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) Paso Del Norte Community Foundation Paso del Norte Health Foundation Village of Vinton
68 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 Fort Worth, TX Large (≥1000) Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center Baylor Scott & White Health BNSFBell Railway City Of Fort Worth CLA Cook Children's Health Care System Dallas Fort Worth International Airport KimleyIDEAHigginbothamHorn& Assoc Lockheed Martin Texas Christian University UNT Health Science Center Fort Worth, TX Medium (201-999) ACH Child and Family Services Apex Capital Corp CatholicCareflite Charities Fort Worth Child Care Associates Clayton Youth Enrichment EECU Credit Union Haynes and Boone, LLP Hillwood Properties Lena LinbeckPopeGroup Medtronic RECARO Aircraft Seating SigmaPro Engineering & Manufacturing, LLC Southeast Restaurant Group dba: Wendy's Texas Health Harris Methodist Alliance Hospital US WhitleyDHHSPenn Fort Worth, TX Small (25-200) Agency Habitat Alliance For Children Ardent Creative Balcom Agency Blue Jean Networks Boys and Girls Club of Greater Tarrant County Brackett & Ellis, P.C. Burnett's Staffing, Inc. Camp Fire First Texas Cancer Care Services Christ'sCauseLabsHaven for Children City Center Management CommunitiesCliftonLarsonAllenInSchools of Greater Tarrant County Fort Worth Botanic Garden | Botanical Research Institute of Texas Fort Worth Housing Solutions FranFund, Inc. Girl Scouts of Texas Oklahoma Plains Girls Inc. of Tarrant County Goodwill Industries of Fort Worth Green Bay Packaging iCare Emergency Room and Urgent Care JHS JTaylorPackaging Kristie's Cleaning Sevice Mackenzie Eason & Associates MineralWare Mycoskie & Associates, Inc. (dba as mma) National Farm Life Insurance Company North Texas Community Foundation One Safe Place Payless Power Peloton Land Solutions, Inc. The Best Place for Working Parents 2022 Designees
69Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com Fort Worth, TX Small (25-200) Performing Arts Fort Worth Pope Hardwicke Christie Schell Kelly & Taplett LLP Providence Bank of Texas Read Fort Worth Richardson Aviation Rogue Architects Royer Commercial Interiors SBL Architecture, Inc. Schaefer Advertising Co. Social Factor Steele & Freeman, Inc. Construction Managers Tarrant Area Food Bank Texas Family Medicine The Ashton Depot Catering and Events The Fort Worth Botanic Garden/BRIT The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation The Ladder Alliance The Parenting Center The Reading Connection Trail Drive Management Corp Trinity Real Estate Investment Services TURNKEY PROJECT SERVICES United Specialty Advertising United Way of Tarrant County Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County Fort Worth, TX Micro (0-24) CORE Insurance Group Fluxtown Productions Fort Worth Chamber Graham & Jones PLLC Kintek LeadershipGroupFort Worth LVTRise Fort Worth, TX Micro (0-24) mFORCE Capital TheTheTheTheR4PathfindersFoundationCliburnMilesFoundationMorrisFoundationProjectsGroup Valor Houston, TX Large (≥1000) Hines McDermott International Motiva Enterprises LLC PROS Holdings, Inc. San Jacinto College Shell USA Silver Eagle Distributors Houston Houston, TX Medium (201-999) Argus Media Baxter & Woodman Blank Rome LLP Murphy Oil TalosNavsavEnergy Houston, TX Small (25-200) Forthea Good Reason Houston Greater Houston Partnership Houston Area Urban League
70 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 Houston, TX Small (25-200) Johnson Development Midway Holdings, LP Mitsui & Co. Energy Marketing and Services (USA), Inc. NeuhausMJLM Education Center Houston, TX Micro (0-24) Air5+8Alliance Houston Near Northwest Management District The Women's Resource Work & Mother San Antonio, TX Large (≥1000) NuStarCiti Energy San Antonio, TX Medium (201-999) Education Service Center, Region 20 Halff Associates, Inc. San Antonio, TX Small (25-200) 7 Master Cleaning Services Bain Medina Bain Bridgehead IT Brighton Center Century 21 Scott Myers, Realtors Coldwell Banker D'Ann Harper, REALTORS CorePath Laboratories Dixie Flag and Banner Company ElringKlinger Texas, LLC G.W. Mitchell Construction Generations Community Federal Credit Union San Antonio, TX Small (25-200) Jungle Disk Juris Medicus, LLC KFW Engineers + Surveying KGBTexas SanSanRVKRosenblattCommunicationsLawFirmArchitectureAntonioChamberofCommerceAntonioHumaneSociety TechPort Center and Arena Tri-Starr Group United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County Visit San Antonio San Antonio, TX Micro (0-24) Early Matters SA Goldstein & Orr Kreager Mitchell, PLLC Parra & Co Sustainable Staffing Inc. Multiple Regions Large (≥1000) Bank of America Bank of Texas, Powered by BOK Financial PNC Multiple Regions Medium (201-999) ChevronCart.comFederal Credit Union Community Impact Newspaper CST Holding Co. Elevate March of Dimes PMG The Best Place for Working Parents 2022 Designees
71Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com Multiple Regions Small (25-200) Baird, Hampton & Brown Byrne Construction Services GL Seaman & Company Hand to IntertechHoldCommercial Flooring K Friese + Associates MBW SERV Corporation McGinnis Lochridge O'Connell Robertson Planning Design Research Plummer Associates, Inc. Satori Capital Schulman, Lopez, Hoffer & Adelstein, LLP Multiple Regions Small (25-200) Sherman Residential TritenSKG Real Estate Partners Multiple Regions Micro (0-24) Cyera Strategies MAYA Consulting OneStar Opportunity Resource Services Victory Steven Notary Services
...ATTEMPTS AT OPTIMIZING THESE INITIAL ACTIVITIES CAN’T CONTINUE FOREVER. AT SOME POINT YOU WILL NEED TO CREATE NEW ENGINES FOR GROWTH.
Gordon Daugherty
PREDICTABLE REVENUE GROWTH IS ONE OF THE HOLY GRAILS OF THE STARTUP WORLD, BUT IT DOESN’T HAPPEN ON ITS OWN.
Startups that get a product in the market with paying customers do a variety of things to boost their sales. After initial product-market fit is achieved and a repeatable customer acquisition model is discovered, the first growth strategy usually involves turning the crank faster and faster—in other words, doing more of the things that first proved successful for customer acquisition and associated revenue growth. Of course, attempts at optimizing these initial activities can’t continue forever. At some point you will need to create new engines for growth. Let’s explore the most common of those growth engines and a framework for helping you decide which is best for you.
Engines GROWTHNEW aunching
STARTUP SUCCESS
Product: A drone that can fly while tethered to a dog, and a mobile app that enables control of the drone for its stated purpose. Customer Target: The elderly population who wish to continue aging at home, and who recognize the benefits of dog ownership but aren’t easily able to walk their dog.
This growth strategy involves creating and selling a new product to the same customer. When implementing this strategy, seek synergies with existing products for the best cross-sell potential. It’s ideal if the same customer acquisition and support methods work well for the new product, too. Adding a second product also enables a land-and-expand sales strategy, whereby one product is used to acquire a new customer and revenue is later expanded with that customer by cross-selling the other product.
Let’s explore a possible growth engine around each vector and its associated considerations.
Many pivots in the early days involve changing the customer target or use case after invalidating some initial assumptions about them. But a pivot usually doesn’t result in an additional customer target or use case. Instead, a better one is selected in order to achieve product-market fit and get the first engine of growth going. This article, instead, relates to companies that have reached the point of either wanting or needing to add a new growth engine for their company. They might want to pursue this strategy because they generally have a good operational handle on things and see an opportunity to accelerate their growth. Or they might need to pursue this strategy because their original growth engine is either reaching its potential or encountering a phenomenon that causes it to not be as strategic or exciting as before. Regardless of the motivation, achieving growth with this strategy involves adding something new to the original growth formula (adding to one or more of the vectors). This means adding a new product, a new customer target, a new geography, or a new use case. This introduces so much risk that usually only one new attribute is added at a time, not multiple.
DoggieDrone Example
VECTORS Before we get to the growth engines themselves, we must understand the vectors of a startup. In this context, a vector is either a product, customer target, geography, or use case. The combination of these vectors make up a big part of your go-tomarket strategy. Let’s use an imaginary case study, DoggieDrone, to make this more clear.
NEW PRODUCT
Geography: The United States. More specifically, the states in which it is legal for low-flight drones to be operated autonomously while tethered to a dog. Use Case: The drone walks the dog on behalf of the owner.
EXPLORING NEW ENGINES OF GROWTH
The company could design and introduce the RoboScoop, a robotic pooper scooper that follows the dog while it’s being walked by the drone. It takes care of business after the dog’s business is done, and returns it home in a compartment that’s lined with a small plastic bag for easy disposal.
REGARDLESS OF THE MOTIVATION, ACHIEVING GROWTH WITH THIS STRATEGY INVOLVES ADDING SOMETHING NEW TO THE ORIGINAL GROWTH FORMULA...
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An obvious geographic expansion opportunity is US states that pass new legislation making this type of drone flight legal. But rather than wait for that to happen organically, the company could spend money on lobbyists to help accelerate the law changes. The company could also take on the riskier option of expanding into an international market where drone use laws are already in their favor.
This growth strategy involves selling the same product to a new type of customer. The new customer could be different in size, demographics, industry, or several other attributes. And because the customer is different, new messaging and positioning will be needed that is unique to the new customer. Awareness campaigns, pricing, and competition might also change.
DoggieDrone Example
• Direct sales for Industry A. Licensing partners for Industry B. You might notice that the segmentations are along the lines of the original list of vectors (product, customer target, geography). This should also give you the hint that launching a growth engine via adding a new vector also gives you the opportunity to decide if an existing RTM should be used or if a new one is better suited to achieve the desired growth results. Just remember that adding a new RTM will introduce new complexities and associated risks.
The main thing to be careful of when adding a new RTM is accidental competition between customer acquisition methods. In other words, if you have both a direct sales team and reseller partners selling into the same market, they will compete with each other. This is referred to as channel conflict, and it is a royal pain to deal with. To minimize, or eliminate, the risk of channel conflict, segment your markets in such a way that unique RTMs are deployed for the various segments. Below are some examples:
The company could start targeting upper-middle-class households in which both parents work. They have the money to spend on something like DoggieDrone. Additionally, both their weekday morning and evening routines for themselves and their kids make dog walking a major inconvenience.
This growth strategy involves expanding your customer acquisition model geographically, which could mean new cities or regions in your home country, or new countries altogether. Expanding into new countries carries significant implications and risks, which should not be taken lightly.
This growth strategy involves new applications for the same product. Implementing this means one or more of the company’s other business plan elements will probably need to change. That means messaging, pricing, customer acquisition, support strategy, etc.
DoggieDrone Example
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DoggieDrone Example
WHAT ABOUT NEW ROUTES-TO-MARKET?
• Direct sales for enterprises (needs to be defined). Resellers for small-to-medium businesses (needs to be defined).
NEW GEOGRAPHY
The drone could be enhanced to follow a family’s son or daughter as they walk or ride their bike to the elementary school in the neighborhood, providing a live video feed and an alert if the child stops or veers off the logical path.
• Direct sales for Product A. Resellers for Product B.
NEW USE CASE
• Direct sales in the United States. Distributors in foreign countries.
NEW CUSTOMER TARGET
A route-to-market (RTM) is essentially a channel or method used to acquire new customers. Common examples include self-service (i.e., ecommerce), direct sales, distribution partners, and licensing partners. Some of these are considered direct routes, which involve you selling directly to your customers, while others are indirect routes, because they involve some intermediary between you and your customers. Adding a new RTM to your customer acquisition strategy could absolutely serve as a growth engine. The reason it wasn’t included in the original list of vectors is because adding a new RTM doesn’t usually increase the total available market (TAM). It could, however, increase the serviceable available market (SAM), meaning it can serve as a growth engine.
Startups that demonstrate consistent and aggressive growth earn the best valuations and are best able to maintain a leadership position in their market. But accomplishing this is so much harder than most first-time founders think. This article provides just one piece of the growth strategy puzzle. Additional emphasis on achieving scalability (“Don’t Confuse Growth with Scalability,” Q3 2021) is required in order for the organization to sustain periods of aggressive growth that last longer than a blip.
If you have two or more potential growth strategies you want to implement next, consider comparing them side by side along multiple attributes—things like leveraging existing core technologies, routes to market, pricing strategy, support model, revenue recognition accounting, and the like. The more synergies that exist, the less you’ll need to create from scratch. And that means less risk overall and more ability to focus on a smaller subset of new factors within the company. But even if you want to make a fancy, color-coded, and scored comparison grid, realize that critically important matters such as launching a new growth engine for your company shouldn’t be relegated to color codes or mathematical scores. The discussions and debates you and your executive team have will best inform you. This article and the table above are just tools to help foster those discussions and debates. Additional columns could relate to pricing strategy, support model, revenue recognition (or financial accounting), tech stack, hosting infrastructure, and the like. You can decide where the important synergies might be different amongst the growthWhenopportunities.Ithinkbackto my personal experiences with launching new growth engines, they mostly locked in the target customer and involved introducing new products for that same customer. The new products either expanded the existing use case or introduced new ones that had synergies with the original product(s). And I must say that customer intimacy is a powerful attribute for any company to leverage. Don’t underestimate how hard it is to really get to know a new type of Onecustomer.company I worked for that experienced very impressive growth had at least five products, all sold to the same broad function within large enterprises. The products had technical integrations between them that offered a fabulous land-andexpand strategy. A typical first deal size was about $150,000, but with reasonable potential to grow to $1 million or more over the next few years. The company was acquired by a Fortune 500 company for $200 million. .
DECIDING WHICH GROWTH
Gordon Daugherty is a seasoned business executive, entrepreneur, startup advisor, investor, and the best-selling author of Startup Success: Funding the Early Stages of Your Venture. A proud native Texan, Daugherty graduated from Baylor University. He has vast experience with early-stage fundraising from both sides of the table, making more than 200 investments and raising more than $80 million in growth and venture capital as a company executive, fund manager, board director, and active advisor. This table is an example of a tool that can be used to foster discussion about matters like launching a new growth engine for your company, but it should augment, not replace, the executive team dialogue.
STRATEGY IS BEST I like to do a lot of evaluation of the synergies between a given growth engine and the current business model. The reason I like this framework is that it helps ground strategy discussions with the executive team. It gives them a methodical approach and allows them to evaluate not just the opportunities that open as a result of adding to a vector but also the risks and implications to the company. It’s easy to get excited about an expanded market size but ignore what needs to be created or changed in order to properly pursue that strategy.
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. . .
MADE EASY Entrepreneurial Thinking Gary Hoover Virtually every survey of the public shows that people love the idea of entrepreneurship. But how many really understand it?
ABOUTABOUTTHINKING...ENTREPRENEURIALISNOTJUSTBUSINESSORSTARTUPS.
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Most people have a bit of the entrepreneur in them and a bit of the bureaucrat, a mix. They are part of a spectrum. Out in the “long tails” at the end of the distribution curve are those who are almost purely entrepreneurial and those who are “born Likewise,bureaucrats.”mostorganizations have a bit of both in them. Startups in the for-profit world are usually highly entrepreneurial. As companies grow and age, they tend to become more bureaucratic as policies, procedures, and processes are enacted. Non-profit enterprises tend to be more bureaucratic and government entities the most bureaucratic. There is great diversity in people and organizations; these attributes vary over time and often depend on the circumstances. These observations are reflected in the diagram below showing a normal distribution curve, with the spectrum at the bottom.
I have spent the last 57 years studying business, especially startups and entrepreneurs. I founded several companies, was the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs Business School, and mentor thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. My most important conclusion is that entrepreneurial thinking is not just about business or about startups. I wish universities viewed entrepreneurship as a discipline in itself rather than relegating it to the business school. The people and groups who establish museums, hospitals, and universities are often true entrepreneurs. Many artists, authors, musicians, and bloggers are entrepreneurial. Even some government agencies have proven to be entrepreneurial in their approach. Most of those people have never taken a business class. What really matters is having an entrepreneurial mindset, which is a way of thinking and of seeing the world. Every organization can become more entrepreneurial. (I even had a rabbi and a minister take my course in entrepreneurial thinking!)
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The characteristics and differences are many. The presence and importance of each varies by individual and by organization. I have listed the most common and most critical in the following paragraphs. Not included are those attributes that any successful individual has, whether an entrepreneurial thinker or not: hard work, persistence, dedication, energy, etc.
Many big organizations spend tremendous time, energy, and money defending the status quo. They have created thousands of jobs, opened stores or factories, control valuable trademarks and patents, and so on. They have a heavy responsibility on their shoulders to not risk losing what they have, to “defend their fortress.” Entrepreneurs are the ones attacking that fortress. Going back in history, they included Microsoft and Apple vs. IBM, Toyota and Tesla vs. General Motors, Walmart vs. Sears, and now Amazon vs. Walmart.
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So what are the attributes of entrepreneurial thinking, and how do they differ from the “corporate” or bureaucratic mindset?
Dissatisfaction with the way things are.
Which seems a slightly confusing way of saying that big corporations first think in terms of what they already have. What are our capital resources, skills, talents, factories or stores, trademarks, etc.? How can we use what we already have to prosper? Whereas a pure entrepreneur starts with nothing except what is in their heads. They think about what they need that they do not have: money, talented people, patents, stores, distribution channels, or whatever is needed to achieve their goals. Then they develop a plan to learn, acquire, hire, or rent what they need. The entrepreneurial and corporate mindsets begin from different starting points.
CHARACTERISTICS OF ENTREPRENEURS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL THINKING
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Another way of thinking about this is the difference between how entrepreneurs view the use of resources compared with how more mature, established organizations view their resources. One of the most famous definitions of entrepreneurship was created by Harvard Business School Professor Howard Stevenson, who said, “Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled.”
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Entrepreneurs see risk differently. General Motors at first looked at electric cars and said, “We are not sure people will ever buy them.” For decades, they “played it safe.” They continued making big cars, but saved money by lowering their quality. Yet playing it safe was the most dangerous strategy of all, resulting in this formerly great company going bankrupt a few years ago. Elon Musk “knew” he was right with Tesla, that if given the chance, he could create a new future. In his mind, he was not taking a big chance. GM was the one taking a big chance. In 1981, I was one of the youngest vice presidents at a big department store company. My mother was very concerned when I said I was quitting to start a bookstore chain. But I knew the department store industry inside out, and it was showing signs of aging. My seven years of research told me that the 1980s and 1990s would be a great time to build book superstores. Mom thought I was taking a huge risk; I thought sticking with the department stores was a bigger risk. Luckily for me, I was right.
YOU CAN’T CONNECT THE DOTS
A corollary to this is that successful entrepreneurs have almost total confidence that they can get what they need. That they can hire the right people, find the right lawyers and accountants, learn every aspect of the business or find someone who has that knowledge, and convince investors to invest, workers to work, and customers to buy.
Entrepreneurial thinkers always believe there is a better way to do things. They are never satisfied. Closely tied to this belief are a sense of purpose and an eye for seen and unseen opportunities. In bureaucratic organizations, one finds many people who wonder why they are doing what they are doing, who think their job is “busy work,” who do not see a purpose to what they do every day. You should never find those things happening in a truly entrepreneurial organization. The greatest entrepreneurs had or have a vision, a purpose, a mission. At levels great and small, they want to change the world. And they have a plan for doing so. Rocking the boat and taking on outdated rules and policies are part of the entrepreneurial process. Doing things because “that is the way we have always done them” gets you nowhere with an entrepreneur. Study how Elon Musk has created SpaceX, overcoming almost everything the experts at NASA “knew.”
LOOKINGONLYFORWARD;LOOKINGYOUCANCONNECTTHEMBACKWARDS.”
Because they so deeply believe in their mission, entrepreneurs take risks. But they are not gamblers as is commonly believed, at least not in the classical sense of a casino or horse track gambler.
Steve Jobs
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COMBINATORY PLAY SEEMS TO BE THE ESSENTIAL FEATURE IN PRODUCTIVE THOUGHT.”
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In seeking and exploiting opportunities, entrepreneurial thinkers pursue both seen and unseen opportunities. For example, the need for a vaccine in a pandemic is obvious. The need for better transportation has been clear to most people at each stage of history.
On the other hand, even Henry Ford reputedly said that if he had given customers what they wanted, he would have made a faster horse. More extreme, did the world desperately need the theme park that sparkled in Walt Disney’s eye? Every successful amusement park operator in American told him he would fail without a roller coaster when Disneyland opened in 1955. He took the right chance. How do entrepreneurs see these opportunities?
The great book The Innovator’s DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen, clearly lays out several key habits of great entrepreneurs: They learn through observation. A skill almost never taught in school. Entrepreneurial thinkers must deeply know and understand their potential customers in order to see those unseen opportunities, those gaps and vacancies in the marketplace. They are always watching people and how they behave, what interests and engages them, what does not. They are students of human behavior. They understand that demography, geography, history, psychology, and sociology are every bit as important as marketing and finance. (The inclusion of history might surprise you, but the greatest of entrepreneurs know the origins of their industry, the histories of their competitors, and study the long-term trends that shape the future.) “The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.” —Winston Churchill “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” —Steve Jobs They learn through experimentation. Many things can only be discovered by trying them to see if they work. Experimentation has risks, but entrepreneurs are willing to take those risks when pursuing their vision. Failure is only bad if you do not learn from it.
Albert Einstein
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86 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 VISIONARY PEOPLE ARE VISIONARY PARTLY BECAUSE OF THE VERY GREAT MANY THINGS THEY DON’T SEE.” Berkeley Rice
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“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” —Albert Einstein “Creativity is just connecting things.” —Steve Jobs
Entrepreneurs know that to achieve their vision, they must concentrate their energies. They must focus.
“Visionary people are visionary partly because of the very great many things they don’t see.” —Berkeley Rice
They have a driven curiosity. They learn from every source. They talk to everyone in their industry. They study online. They read books and industry periodicals. They develop networks of people who can help them or teach them. They become experts at questioning, figuring out the right questions. They learn how to probe, how to truly Theselisten.steps require one thing: independence of thought. Don’t believe experts; don’t believe teachers; don’t believe industry veterans; don’t believe that the old ways of doing things are the best; don’t even believe your friends and relatives. While you may come around to agree with some of the things you hear, you only do it after you have studied the information and data yourself and given it a great deal of thought. If you are uncomfortable being an eccentric or non-conformist, you probably cannot become a true, deep entrepreneur or entrepreneurial thinker. The things that block other people’s thinking—obstacles, naysayers, fear, lack of resources—do not block the entrepreneurial mind. Observing, experimenting, questioning, and independence of mind open the door to the most important single aspect of innovation and coming up with new ideas and solutions, what The Innovator’s DNA authors call “associating.”
• Be curious, learn in every way possible.
I have seen so many bureaucratic organizations that list 10 or 20 key goals each year. That really means they have no goals, or at least none or very few that they will achieve. While each component in an organization has its own micro-goals, the whole entrepreneurial organization shares an overarching vision and a very short list of key goals at any given time. This also implies that the best entrepreneurial leaders are also great communicators. They are continually telling their employees, their customers, their suppliers, their bankers, and their friends what they are up to and why. Their vision is crystal clear. Entrepreneurs are above all else salespeople— selling their ideas, their vision to the world. I could go on at great length into more details and corollaries to these basic principles. But if you or your organization would like to become more entrepreneurial, these key concepts are a great place to start:
Virtually all breakthroughs come from taking two things that everyone else sees every day and combining them in a new way. Combine taxicabs with the world of freelancers and you get Uber. Take that idea and combine it with Marriott and you get AirBnB. One of the most successful businesses my friends and I started was Bookstop, which combined the concepts behind Waldenbooks (then the nation’s biggest bookseller) and Toys R Us (also a huge success at the time with its big selections and low prices).
• Be focused on your purpose and able to communicate it effectively.
• Always look for ways to combine old ideas into a new one.
Gary Hoover was a cofounder of Bookstop and Hoovers Inc., and serves as executive director of the American Business History Center. He was the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas–Austin in 2009–10. His writings can be found at Hooversworld .com and AmericanBusinessHistory.org. His most recent book is Bedtime Business Stories: Short Sagas of Business Creation, Success, and Failure. Feature
• Study and observe human behavior.
• Experiment, test your ideas.
. . . .
• Distrust the status quo, never be satisfied.
• Be willing to say, “I do not know how but I can figure it out or find someone who can.”
• Make up your own mind, think independently.
. . . .
• Seek opportunities to make the world better, seen or unseen.
GOOD MANAGERS MATTER. PROMOTION
The managers at your organization are likely smart people who are skilled in their functional domains. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been made supervisors. But due to a pervasive blindspot in the modern business world, these same top performers often turn out to be low performers in the work of leading a team. We see this clearly in the data. Gallup finds that people promoted to management lack the required skills 80 percent of the time. Another extensive study found that high performing individual contributors turn out to be worse than average people managers. But we can also see the disease of poor management by simply looking around. We’re in a crisis of turnover—led, as usual, not by people leaving their companies but by people leaving their bosses. How many great people have left your company lately? Can you confidently say that their supervisors were highly skilled in managing, leading, and coaching people, and that they gave your talented employee the support and opportunities they deserve? There is good news. Really good news, in fact, for CEOs who understand the underlying issue: Good people management can be learned. Management is like a technology within an organization. As with other technologies, it can be outdated and in need of an upgrade—or it can give you an undeniable competitive advantage. When you have a system for ensuring great people management, it can rocket your company’s overall outcomes to levels you didn’t previously imagine. The business literature is very clear on this. Implementing basic management practices— from effective goal setting to structured feedback to a good recruiting process—puts companies ahead of the pack. One particularly robust study of over 10,000 companies linked top-tier management to faster growth, higher productivity, and greater profitability. Managers are the people we trust to keep our teams aligned, inspired, and accountable. When managers are not given clear expectations and practical training, their teams are left to deal with a whole variety of dysfunction, from micromanagement to near-total abdication of responsibilities. As CEO of Manager360, I lead a team that’s passionate about creating exceptional workplaces through exceptional people managers. With years in the management and leadership trenches, we’ve developed a system—including experiential learning, hands-on tools, and built-in accountability through software—that ensures your managers are equipped for success. Let’s talk about how we can work together to upskill your managers, saving your company time and headaches and giving it a clear competitive advantage.
There is a silent disease crippling companies across the country—the disease of incompetent managers.
manager360.com PROMOTION
Alicia Thrasher Cofounder & CEO, Manager360
MANAGEMENT IS LIKE A TECHNOLOGY WITHIN AN ORGANIZATION. AS WITH OTHER TECHNOLGIES, IT CAN BE OUTDATED AND IN NEED OF AN UPGRADE—OR IT CAN GIVE YOU AN COMPETITIVEUNDENIABLEADVANTAGE. us at info@manager360.com, call us at 512-580-3452, or learn more about what we do at manager360.com
PRACTICESLEADERSHIP ELEVATEFOREXCELLENTOUTCOMES Karen Martin Feature
6. Developing & managing relationships
4. Develop people 5. Build and manage relationships
Whether an organization produces goods or delivers services, providing value to customers is the most essential task of an organization. Therefore, the ultimate role of a leader is to ensure his, her, or their team gets work completed safely, reliably, and efficiently. This requiresHowever,management.somewhere along the way (likely when the Industrial Age began), the concept of management has gotten skewed. Some have grown to believe that a manager’s job is to manage people. In reality, a manager’s job is to manage the work and support the people doing the work. Properly managing the work requires clearly defined standard work, which is absent in some organizations.
7. Reflecting Planning and Preparing Planning is the process of defining the actions required to achieve a desired goal. It includes both the timeframe for achieving the goal and who is accountable for the outcome. Planning also includes strategically thinking through an approach a leader will take in conversations and interactions, with an end goal in mind. All too often leaders forge ahead or react in the moment without consideration. Inserting a clarity pause reduces the likelihood that habitual tendencies will prevail, which can lead to accidental success, at best.
Two fundamental questions initiate the process: What are the key responsibilities of leaders? And, how should a leader spend his or her time fulfilling those responsibilities?
Myriad roles leaders play can be condensed into six primary responsibilities:1.Upholdthe organization’s purpose, mission, vision, values, and annual goals
With clarity about leadership responsibilities, the next question is: how? There are seven key activities that can enable leaders to fulfill their six responsibilities. While it’s true that leaders’ mindsets, communication style, and attitudes matter, the practical aspect of being a leader comes down to what one does with the minutes in a day that he, she, or they are given. Leading is largely an exercise in prioritization and time management. LSW codifies the choices leaders make.
2. Manage process and performance
SEVEN KEY ACTIVITIES
92 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022 Google the word “leadership,” and you’ll receive more than a billion results. Search for leadership books on Amazon, and you’ll find more than 60,000 results. Much has been written aboutWhy,leadership.then,have the Gallup Q12 Engagement Survey and Gallup’s research on managers continued to reflect large gaps in leadership effectiveness? Why does dissatisfaction with one’s direct supervisor remain a top reason for voluntary turnover?
LSW, recognize that the practice will likely require significant mindset shifts across a large portion of your leadership team. It’s not as simple as giving someone a checklist of effective leadership practices to follow. It takes time, repetition, and a commitment to operating in a more disciplined way.
Achieving excellence in leadership has not traditionally been treated the way achieving operational excellence has, by codifying performance expectations. Standardizing management practices centers on being more thoughtful about how a leader spends his, her, or their day. Standardizing work is a proven way to reduce the variation in the quantity and quality of work output, which creates consistently high levels of operational performance. Standardizing leadership practices—a proven approach that is relatively unknown outside of Lean manufacturing (a manufacturing production method that reduces waste and increases productivity) circles—is equally effective in developing more effective, resilient, and agile leaders. In short, leader standard work (LSW) creates more consistent and effective leadership practices across an organization. Operating with LSW creates a consistent leadership experience for employees, boosts business performance, and is a fast way to spread proven management practices across the organization. It’s a glue that, when used in conjunction with operational standard work and daily management, creates high-performing workTheenvironments.practiceapplies to anyone who manages work and leads teams. Whether a frontline supervisor, middle manager, or a senior leader, capabilities and results improve when leaders adopt the type of LSW appropriate for their level in theToorganization.beginadopting
SIX PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES
3. Build and foster a culture of excellence
1. Planning and preparing 2. Managing daily work 3. Going and seeing 4. Coaching for professional development
5. Coaching to build problem-solving capabilities
Seven key activities are needed to fulfill one or more of the leadership responsibilities and form the components of LSW:
6. Learn continuously
Managing Daily Work
Leader standard work is built with sufficient “think” time to ensure a leader’s goals are met more reliably and with greater ease, and it lowers the risk of creating negative, unintended consequences. When leaders operate with greater intentionality, they’re able to accomplish more and build stronger relationships for the future.
Coaching for Professional Development
Going & Seeing In well-crafted LSW, leaders spend a significant amount of time at Gemba (where the work is done). Gemba is defined as seeing with one’s own eyes how work is accomplished and how customers engage with an organization’s goods or services.
93Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
Employees at all levels need two types of development: skill-centric and capability-centric. Skill development helps team members build proficiency in specific tasks or activities, whereas capability development helps people improve overall performance so they can advance in the organization and take on more challenging work. Developing a team in these two areas is often an afterthought, or it is sporadically achieved. Including professional development as an intentional aspect of LSW increases the likelihood that leaders make the time for this vital role.
1. Learning about the work itself, the physical environment, performance, and the people doing the work. What obstacles to success are they encountering?
SHIFT FROM PREVENTION.PROACTIVEPROBLEM-SOLVINGREACTIVETOPROBLEM
4. Problem-solving to assure performance gaps are readily identified, scientific problem-solving is actively used, and abnormalities are appropriately addressed.
3. Cultivating relationships with employees in the quest to build an intentional culture.
Feature
A leader’s job—no matter the level—becomes easier when the work is managed well, which provides the planning and reflection time needed to look ahead and shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive problem prevention.
2. Checking performance against targets, adherence to work standards, and output quality.
Professional development provides a workforce with the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs well and advance in their careers—both of which are key contributors to an organization’s success. Developing people moves them closer to their potential, which leads to deeper engagement and retention.
There are four types of Gemba visits, each with a clearly defined purpose:
Leader standard work includes these visits as an expectation with a defined cadence. The leader’s calendar reflects this commitment.
Reflecting Time for regular reflection is arguably a leader’s greatest need and is often ignored. Reflection is central to the study and adjust phases of PDSA (plan-do-study-adjust), a proven approach to achieving goals and closing gaps. Leaders often achieve greater success with building a disciplined practice of reflection when they view each day, week, or month as a PDSA cycle.
Coaching to Problem-SolvingBuildCapabilities
94 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3 2022
SETTING THE STAGE FOR SUCCESS
Problem solvers need proficiency in two skill sets: the technical aspects of problem solving—the mechanics—and the supportive skills that enable problem-solving excellence, such as building capabilities to: • think critically, • distill and synthesize information, • lead change, and • know how and when to escalate problems. But here’s the rub: leaders should not begin coaching problemsolving until they have achieved at least a moderate degree of proficiency as a scientific problem-solver themselves. You wouldn’t hire a piano teacher who was just learning to play the piano, would you? This reality requires leaders to engage with a proficient problem-solving coach. Developing & Managing Relationships
First, highly effective leaders possess mindset and behavioral standards that should be developed in and adhered
Significant time is needed to develop and nurture the wide variety of internal and external relationships that help leaders either achieve success or make their jobs more difficult. Because nurturing these relationships takes time, including this need in LSW and reserving time in one’s calendar makes it more likely that a leader will do this important work.
EMPLOYEES AT ALL LEVELS NEED TWO TYPES OF DEVELOPMENT: SKILL-CENTRIC AND CAPABILITY-CENTRIC.
Organizations have an acute need to build armies of proficient, scientific problem-solvers. Building this capability is no easy feat.
In addition to defining a consistent cadence for the above activities, there are a few corollary musts that are critical success factors in performing the seven key activities to fulfill a leader’s six key responsibilities.
The second is addressing the organizational vulnerabilities that should be shored up for leaders to be successful. The first vulnerability exists in organizations that aren’t clear about their purpose, aren’t intentional about their strategy, and/or don’t have alignment across the leadership team about one, the other, or both. This notably common condition creates organizational drag—unproductive ambiguity at the highest levels in the organization that cascades down to the frontlines.
IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT AN INFRASTRUCTURE.EXCELLENCE-LACED
PERFORMANCEBUSINESSOUTSTANDING
LSW does not dictate the specific path for leading, but it ensures that everyone gets to the same destination with some degree of consistency and predictability. How leaders lead matters. Outstanding business performance is impossible without an excellence-laced infrastructure. That includes excellent processes, excellent improvement methods, and excellent work environments—all of which are impossible without excellent leaders Karen Martin is the president of TKMG, Inc. and the founder and president of TKMG Academy, Inc. She’s the author two leadership books, The Outstanding Organization and Clarity First, along with three other business performance improvement books.
THE TAKEAWAY
The second vulnerability is the degree of clarity and discipline a leadership team collectively exhibits toward priorities. Building strong prioritization skills and disciplined adherence to priorities is a requirement for fulfilling the first responsibility. Operating with unclear, frequently changing priorities or those that conflict with one another creates a second type of organizational drag. Developing the discipline to say “no” or “not yet” and de-selecting from excessively long lists of problems to be solved and opportunities to be explored is vital for leaders to succeed.
While leader standard work is a powerful way to improve business performance and provide a consistent method for leadership development, there’s often pushback against efforts to develop and deploy it. One common argument is: leadership is an art, and art can’t be standardized. While it’s true that each person’s journey to becoming a leader is based on his, her, or their life experience, beliefs, attitude, and drive—and those inputs shape the way a leader approaches decisions and conversations—there are proven leadership methods leaders can incorporate into the way they lead.
95Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com to by all leaders, such as operating with humility and curiosity and the most foundational of them all: possessing an obsession for delivering high value to customers. These mindsets and behaviors serve as a necessary membrane that surrounds all thought and action.
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96 Texas CEO Magazine // Q3
When the Fortune 500 ranking came out earlier this year, Texas hit a new milestone: We are now home to more Fortune 500 headquarters than any other state in the nation.
So far in 2022, we’re still welcoming more headquarters large and small. Here are some of the recent relos.
Recent Headquarters Relocations to the Lone Star State 2022
New Location: Dallas Origin City: Santa Clara, CA New Location: Irving Origin City: Deerfield, IL
Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction-equipment manufacturer, has roots in Illinois dating back to 1910. But in June, it announced its new home would be Irving in North Texas, a city that continues to earn its designation as “headquarters of headquarters.” Caterpillar currently has a facility in Irving, where about 120 people work, and has had facilities in Texas since the 1960s. It will continue to employ about 17,000 people in Illinois.
Aviatrix, a maker of cloud networking tools for enterprise businesses, decided to pack up from Silicon Valley and make the move to Texas earlier this year. “It’s a good talent base,” CEO Steve Mullaney recently told the Dallas Business Journal. “It’s centrally located. There are a lot of good things about Dallas.” Aviatrix reached unicorn status in September 2021, when it was valued at $2 billion.
DarkPulse, a maker of fiber sensors that allow enterprises to detect corrosion and system weaknesses, announced that its headquarters is moving from the Big Apple to Space City early in 2022. It now has a 10-year lease for 4,224 square feet in the iconic Mellie Esperson Building on Walker Street. DarkPulse said it plans to hire about 50 new employees for the Houston office. It will also relocate some UK team members to Special Teams unit, which will be located in Houston.
New Location: Houston Origin City: Philadelphia, PA New Location: McKinney Origin City: Carson, CA
New Location: Houston Origin City: New York, NY New Location: Plano Origin City: Ripley, MS
It’s been an eventful couple of years for Elite Advanced Polymers, which was acquired by private equity firm DestinHaus Capital in February 2021. At the tail end of last year, it got both a new CEO (Seiichiro “Ichiro” Araki, who helped lead the acquisition at DestinHaus) and a new headquarters (Plano). Shortly thereafter, it announced its acquisition of the speciaity rubber compounder J Dunnam & Co. The company said that it hopes to pull from the rich talent pool in the Plano area and expand in the southern US from its new HQ.
CDI offers engineering services, primarily in the energy, chemicals, and infrastructure sectors, and its HQ move to Houston, which officially took place on March 1, places it closer to many of its clients. CDI will hold on to a small office in Philadelphia to continue support of its clients in that area. In a release, CEO Steve Karlovic noted that CDI will also “benefit from the rich talent the [Houston] area has to offer.”
HBCU HUB is the maker of an app that helps students discover, prepare for, and meet recruiters at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and its headquarters is now situated in McKinney. Since most HBCUs are in the southern part of the country (and only one in California), the relocation has distinct advantages. “This move comes at a great time for our organization, as we are now closer to our end users,” said cofounder and CEO Jonathan Swindell. “Furthermore, this relocation allows us to visit client schools as we train staff on the new version of our application that is soon to be released. We look forward to having a positive impact within McKinney as we will be sourcing local talent as we continue to build technology that closes the opportunity gap.”
97Q3 2022 // TexasCEOMagazine.com
Want to meet these and other new Texas HQs and give them a warm Texas welcome? Come to the YTexas Summit at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on September 30, 2022. Get tickets at ytexas.com/2022summit.
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