When I went into business school at Indiana University and then joined Price Waterhouse upon graduation, it never occurred to me to work at Barry-Wehmiller.
It wasn’t until my father asked me to join him as “someone he could trust” in 1969 when the company was a struggling $20 million in revenue machinery company.
Similarly, my son, Kyle Chapman, who is now President of Barry-Wehmiller, chose a business education and joined Bank of America upon graduation.
Recently, Kyle had the opportunity to share his perspective on his sense of stewardship of the legacy of his grandfather and father on the Family Business Audiocast. You can listen through the link below or through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible or iHeart Radio.
Kyle joined Barry-Wehmiller following his rich experience at Bank of America about 15 years ago to lead BW Forsyth Partners, a “hybrid equity model” that would further enhance the BW business portfolio.
Chet Walker –- Kyle’s senior leader at Bank of America Capital Investors who had joined the BW Board of Directors-– developed an idea with Kyle and me to launch this new part of Barry-Wehmiller. This “hybrid equity model” would blend the best of Kyle’s private equity experience and his unique value-creation strategies with an intention for long-term investment. In addition, it would be a unique blend of my experience and Kyle’s that would provide an enhanced business model of disciplined strategic investing and profound care for all stakeholders.
After successfully building BW Forsyth Partners into a $800 million group, Barry-Wehmiller’s Board of Directors invited Kyle to step into a closer partnership with me as President of Barry-Wehmiller, while I retained the CEO and Chairman role.
The combination of Barry-Wehmiller’ s growth and BW Forsyth Partners has taken the $1 billion organization when Kyle joined BW to a $3.6 Billion global organization today with BW Forsyth further enhancing our balance of products, markets and customers.
In his interview with the Family Business Audiocast, Kyle talked about his leadership journey and his vision of Barry-Wehmiller for the future. I encourage you to listen, but I want to share some specific insights.
On the beginning of his professional career:
Grew up in St. Louis — a wonderful city to live in and run an organization in — went to the University of Virginia, studied finance, got right into private equity on the East Coast and Bank of America's captive private equity arm, Bank of America capital investors.
When you think about the background and some experiences we've had that positioned me for where I am today, just the pace and the diversity of things you see in private equity, just is an unbelievably steep learning curve, and you see different business models, all sorts of things…
Did that for a number of years, and then decided that I wanted to get out of (being) behind just the strategy and Excel spreadsheets, and got into operation of a company that the private equity firm had bought, and really started putting, kind of, where the rubber meets the road, trying to get strategy going, developed an acquisition program, started building out regions in this insurance services business. And then, that led me to, 15 years ago, coming back to Barry-Wehmiller to start BW Forsyth Partners...
Remember, Barry-Wehmiller grew from about $20 million in 1987 to about a billion at the time we started this. And we just found that we have operating skill sets, we have cultural skill sets, we have M&A skill sets. And we wanted to expose more of the world to our culture.
And so, how do we do that?
We can ask people to listen to us, we can do a variety of things, but going out and building great businesses with our cultural initiative as one of the critical value points was the best way to build followership and the best way to expose both our business model thinking and our cultural initiatives to more of the world.
And so, it was not only a point of diversification when we launched it, but also kind of this cultural platform that we could show you could buy businesses, not use high leverage, go back to good old fashioned operating value creation, and do something great over the long term without having to sell it or chase IRRs (Internal Rate of Return) and things like that.
On his vision for Barry-Wehmiller and its future and his responsibility as President of the company:
I've been President of Barry-Wehmiller for just about four years now, and leading up to that, I was interim CFO, and before that, I was kind of financial advisor to my dad while doing the hybrid equity investing. And we just saw these wonderful things, these ingredients that got our organization to where it is today. And one of the most important things was our culture, our dedication to Truly Human Leadership…
And so, the one thing, four years ago, I said is never going to change — in fact, I put it outside the wall of my office in this big display — is our “why”. We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people. That is the lens through which we make all of our decisions. That is what got galvanized during the ‘08/’09 crisis when our business kind of took a hit, but not as big a hit as other people.
And we came together as a family and preserved jobs and everything and came out of it stronger. And so, that cultural foundation can't change, won't change, and it's really kind of, as I think, about how do I take it forward, right? We need to do some things differently…
You know, we've done about 130 acquisitions. We've done things really well. But our next phase of growth is going to need a more complete play pattern and my goal is to show that we measure success by the way we touch the lives of people, but (also) to show that we can have people and performance in total harmony and not one in sacrifice of the other.
If I can prove that, if we can attract, retain, develop the best talent in the world, if we can innovate, if we can cultivate vibrant customer relationships, if we can continue to do M&A, and as a result of all those things, our financial performance is in the top quartile, decile, people will not only read my dad's book, they'll study it like they do GE, like they do Danaher… and they'll show that you can perform with excellence and you can care for people at the same time.
And by the way, it's the only way to lead organizations, not just something this sleepy little family company does. And so, when I think about what I'm trying to do, it's just to make sure my dad's legacy extends decades. Decades beyond his time on earth.
As I wrote in Everybody Matters, many years ago I was having dinner with a small group. During a lull in the conversation, Brian Wellinghoff -- who is now our Director of Outreach, but at the time was a recently hired team member -- startled me by asking, “What is your greatest fear, Bob?”
I’m not one to dwell on such things, but I said to Brian, “My greatest concern is that we have been blessed with a vision of leadership where our focus is on sending people home fulfilled and that this culture of care would die with me.”
We needed to create a way for our leadership approach to live on and continue to evolve beyond my time. And over the years, we’ve made a great effort to institutionalize our culture through our leadership training in Barry-Wehmiller University and setting Leadership Expectations and Commitments throughout the organization.
There’s a saying we often repeat in leadership meetings at Barry-Wehmiller, “What brought us here won’t get us there.” We must always bring the spirit of continuous improvement, not just to operations, but equally to our culture of caring for those we have the privilege to lead.
When you truly care about your people, you not only need to give them an environment where they feel like they matter -- where their gifts and talents can thrive -- you also have to make sure their livelihoods are safe and secure with a well-designed business model.
My leadership journey and Kyle’s leadership journey have been uniquely different. And that creates a powerful combination of experiences to give those in our care a grounded sense of hope for the future while proving that you can create economic and human value in harmony.
I’m proud that Kyle has embraced a strong commitment to our values and a desire to show the world that business can be a powerful force for good if we have the skills and courage to care for those in our span of care.
I’m very confident and excited about the future. And we will continue to work to build a better world.