Over the years, Barry-Wehmiller has been fortunate to have many great leaders.
Tim Sullivan is one.
Until his recent retirement, Tim was Group President, Paper and Converting, where he provided leadership and guidance for two Barry-Wehmiller platforms: BW Paper Systems and BW Converting Solutions. But his resume over a 32-year career with the organization included so much more.
Tim played a central role in Barry-Wehmiller’s strategic acquisition initiatives, having been involved in many of the organization’s 115-plus acquisitions since he joined Barry-Wehmiller as the Director of Corporate Development in 1989. He also has previously offered his skills as Director of Customer Service, Chief Financial Officer and President of Pneumatic Scale Angelus, a division of Barry-Wehmiller.
At one time, Tim served as CEO of MarquipWardUnited (now BW Papersystems,) a global supplier of capital equipment to the corrugating and finishing; sheeting and packaging; and stationery, book-binding and security-documents industries. He also served as President/CEO of Paper Converting Machine Company (PCMC), which supports the tissue, nonwovens, package-printing and bag-converting industries worldwide.
Though he has retired from day-to-day activities in BW, Tim is still a member of our board of directors. On this podcast, Mary Rudder and I spoke with Tim in a sort of “exit interview,” where we talked about his personal leadership journey, as well as many of the things he learned as Truly Human Leadership evolved in our company.
Tim does a great job articulating what our company believes about earning and fulfilling our customers’ trust. He also talks about the importance of our company’s response to the 2008-2009 economic downturn and how it really cemented a culture of Truly Human Leadership within BW and its leadership.
Podcast Transcript:
Tim Sullivan:
If I had to put it in very simple words, I would say, respect each person and value each person. That's really the power of Truly Human Leadership, is being able to value each and every individual. And again, how does that come through in the way we do business in Barry-Wehmiller? I think it's the way we empower people and the way that they feel empowered and the way they make a difference in our company. From rapid response teams, to customer service representatives, engineers, field service technicians, all of these people and I'm only naming a few, have tremendous responsibilities and tremendous opportunities to impact our customers and our business. And if you can truly respect and value each person, I think it just loosens great energy and great power on behalf of our company.
Mary Rudder:
How in the world did you end up at Barry-Wehmiller?
Tim:
Well, I had a good friend who I started at Anheuser-Busch with, right out of college here in St. Louis, named Phil Ostapowicz. And Phil and I spent the first four years of our career together at Anheuser-Busch. First here in St. Louis and then we both transferred together to the Los Angeles brewery, which is how I got to the West Coast. And Phil had moved back previously. He had taken another job with Coca-Cola, moved back to St. Louis, left Coke St. Louis, and joined Bob here at Barry-Wehmiller. And he began talking to me about Barry-Wehmiller in coming back to St. Louis.
He was my introduction to Bob and of course, serendipity, right? Things come together. About the time I was talking to Bob, I was also courting my wife and we were both Midwesterners. We were looking to move away from California and back to the Midwest. And I was really looking for an opportunity to join a smaller company with aspirations to grow and just see where it leads. And Bob made a great impression on me and the opportunity of Barry-Wehmiller seemed to match a lot of my talents and a lot of my experiences. So it just seemed like a good fit and we took a shot.
Mary:
Did you, at that point, think, "I'm going to really help this company grow. I can really help it grow?" Or where you're like, "I need to learn some things." I mean, when you come into a job, you sort of have a plan for how you can add value, so-
Tim:
Well, I came into the organization as the acquisitions guy. So I reported jointly to Bob and to our CFO at the time. And I really was here to help the company do acquisitions. So yes, I was really hopeful that my particular talent would help the company grow. I would say, within my first week here at Barry-Wehmiller, we began discussing the acquisition of Pneumatic Scale. I came here in March of 1989, literally 32 years ago, and we acquired Pneumatic Scale in Boston in mid November of 1989. So it was like the first thing I began working on when I came here. Our CFO was a very tenacious guy, Bob of course, is a very tenacious person and they made it happen.
Mary:
But there were a lot of other acquisitions after that, pretty quickly, right? I mean, that was sort of the big one that kicked things off and what'd you learn from Pneumatic Scale? Because that's one we talk about all the time and sort of the launching of it all.
Tim:
Well, for me personally, it really demonstrated kind of the attributes of the type of company we were looking for. Until you actually engage in an acquisition and engage with an acquired company and follow the strategy, how do you really know the strategy works in action? So I think what Pneumatic Scale demonstrated for me was that the strategy that had been put together in terms of the types of companies that we were looking for and the type of strategies that we would undertake and tactics we would undertake, all came home with Pneumatic Scale.
Mary:
And what were those tactics? Because Barry-Wehmiller wasn't well known and we didn't have the cultural selling points that we do now. So why did they want to join Barry-Wehmiller?
Tim:
Well, they didn't, initially. That's sort of the challenge of our industry is that we're in an industry that's highly fragmented, several industries now, that are highly fragmented, that have a lot of private companies, family-owned. And in many cases, those companies really don't want to sell. They would prefer to remain independent and keep the company in family ownership. But generally they hit some sort of an event that causes a financial distress and forces them to look outside for a partner. And Pneumatic Scale was exactly that case. It was a hundred year old company that had a great history, an enormous installed base of equipment due to that strong history, but they were suffering from poor leadership at the time, had lost their way a little bit, were in significant financial trouble.
And that allowed us the opportunity to really come in and partner with the leadership team, buy the company, partner with the leadership team and begin to turn the company around. And those are the philosophies we were looking... The traits we were looking for in potential acquisitions were exactly that. A company with a great history, a large installed base of equipment, and then some sort of financial distress, because Bob was very confident that he knew how to fix those companies and turn them around. Most of our early acquisitions followed that formula exactly.
Mary:
Well, we've talked a lot through the years about the hidden value that we were able to see. Did you see that? Did you feel that?
Tim:
I did because I immediately, at Pneumatic Scale, began working with Bob and with the customer service team at Pneumatic Scale. That was my indoctrination deep into that philosophy. And yes, I could see the value emerging as we began working on the aftermarket side of the business at Pneumatic Scale.
Mary:
Right. That's where you became VP of customer service. And a lot of... I mean, your customer service acumen is still talked about today. How would you characterize your philosophy on serving customers that you probably have developed back then?
Tim:
In terms of philosophy on serving customers, I think it's fairly simple. Always do the right thing. Now, what does that mean, because that can mean different things to different people. But I think if you always do the right thing for our people, you always do the right thing for our customers and you always do the right thing for our company, in the end, you will win the respect and trust of those customers. And doing the right thing for a customer isn't always exactly what the customer thinks they want. In a lot of cases, they want some sort of a discount, they want some sort of a free service, they want whatever happens to the extended warranties, a lot different things. They want value at the moment. And in my mind, always doing the right thing for a customer means helping them find the value over the long-term. The value in the partnership with our company, the value of the assets they acquired over the long-term. I would say the philosophy is always do the right thing.
I don't want to take too much credit for this. A lot of the things that we put in place in Pneumatic Scale were just extensions of Bob's experiences and philosophies. Number one, customer service people touch our customers, generally on a daily basis. We always had the philosophy that you could sell a machine to a customer, but customers only buy machines when they need to expand production, they're launching a new product. That can be a frequent thing. Customers might buy machines annually. They might buy a machine once every five years, once every 15 years. But when they're operating those machines, they have touch points with our company through our customer service representatives on a daily or weekly basis. So making sure that our customer service representatives are valued and motivated is fundamental to who we are as a company.
And then customers have a right to expect outstanding service from us because they trusted us. They bought the machine, they have a right to expect that we'll stand behind that machine. And that means delivering parts at better than industry norms. Customers have a right to expect if they call us, they're going to get a part in a very timely basis. So we worked with our customer service reps to make sure they felt empowered and felt the ability and the support to serve our customers in an outstanding fashion. We worked with the manufacturing side of the business to make sure that we were fulfilling parts orders on an extremely timely basis, through stocking programs, through a rapid response teams, through a number of initiatives.
Mary:
And were these things that you had learned in your MBA program or did you feel like you were learning on the job as you went?
Tim:
Oh, it was all learning on the job. That was one of the great things about Barry-Wehmiller in the early days is you could try things and keep trying things. And if they didn't work, you could stop and try other things. It was a great place to learn and grow. There was a lot of freedom and no, I didn't come with any particular skill sets in customer service, trust me.
Mary:
All right. So then you were elevated to president of Pneumatic Scale, so that's your-
Tim:
Before that I had to stop in finance again. I went from VP of customer service to CFO.
Mary:
So is this like a, okay, Tim, I want you to do this now?
Tim:
Just the short story on becoming CFO is Bob decided one day that he needed a new chief financial officer. And he would tell you at that time, you didn't have very good luck hiring people from the outside. So I guess I was... Everybody else took a step back and I didn't move. I was the one left standing there. So Bob talked me into moving into the finance role.
Mary:
Wow. How'd that go?
Tim:
We've had better chief financial officers, I'll tell you that. And that was my first reaction. When Bob said, "Hey, I have a thought," that's always... I've learned since then, whenever Bob starts, "Hey, I have a thought," that's when you cringe and take a step back. But I mean, seriously, he one day said, "Hey, I have a thought. I really need to move on from our current chief financial officer and I'd really like you to step into the role." My first reaction was, "Bob I am not an accountant and I am not somebody that aspires to or would be good at being the head of finance in a company." And he felt differently.
And we had a long talk and eventually... I thought about it overnight and I came back to him and I said, "Okay. I want to try it." And I would say I was in the role for two to three years from 1995 until 1997, I think. A little over two years. And I really was just the leader of the finance department. I wasn't necessarily the senior finance person, if you will. So we had good people in finance at the time, Greg Coonrod, Mike Zaccarello, and several others. And we made it work. We made it work. But it clearly was not a great long-term fit for me.
Mary:
Well, because they also needed you then to take over the presidency of Pneumatic Scale. What were you learning about leadership at that point? Because Bob is basically placing his trust in you. He saw something in you and said, "Okay, Tim's got some skills here. He's doing a great job. He can figure things out and he can motivate teams and individuals."
Tim:
I guess what I learned or the way I approached it was be confident but be humble. People needed to have confidence in you as a leader so you needed to be confident that you could undertake this responsibility and this care for people. But you needed to be humble and recognize that... I didn't know everything I needed to know to be the CFO and certainly didn't know everything I needed to know to be president of a company. But there's a lot of skilled people, a lot of talented people, throughout the organization and you just got to be humble and you got to make sure that you find those people and you listen to their input. And as you said, Mary, you learn as you go.
Mary:
Well, it sounds like some of those central things that serve you well, too, was realizing that our customer service people need to be appreciated for the critical role that they play. So that was one thing, because we needed our customers, but we needed our customers to feel needed and valued and that their needs were being met. And you were learning a lot about leadership. We talk a lot about it that ripple effect. If we take care of our people, your customers will be taken care of. I mean, is it you think that is? How do you know that? How do we know that our customers are feeling the way that we treat our people well?
Tim:
When you say how do you know that customers feel our culture? I guess what I'd say is customers choose us. They choose us as partners, whether it's buying a new machine or... They choose us as their partner because they trust us. They trust our people and they trust that our people are empowered to help them be successful. And the clearest example I have... We've certainly won our share of orders that we weren't the lowest priced competitor, we didn't necessarily have the leading edge technology, but customers choose us. And a great example, let's just say a big tissue customer who was expanding a mill in South Carolina, was working with our team in Green Bay to choose a supplier. And this was a contract that was worth tens of millions of dollars. And we weren't the incumbent supplier, the incumbent supplier was a competitor out of Italy, and we didn't necessarily have leading edge technology. We had very competitive technology. Very competitive with the incumbent in Italy.
But our people made our customer's decision makers feel so comfortable when they visited Green Bay. And so comfortable that they would be taken care of and valued as customers. No matter what happened, through the installation and the operation of these machines. Even to the point where one of the decision makers had some eyesight issues and our team went out and blew up and expanded all of the drawings to sizes that this gentlemen could read. And frankly, he was so touched by that, that our team was so thoughtful to do something like that. That was probably one of the key moments that pushed the decision in our direction. Our team members are truly empowered. They are people who think beyond themselves and think about our customers. And I think that shines through.
Mary:
The key is making sure that our people feel that.
Tim:
I mean, truthfully, and obviously there's... I mean, we have recognition events and those sorts of things, but I think you just have to be a genuine leader and a genuine person on a daily basis. In my world, that's the greatest thing that you can do is just be a genuine person and a genuine leader on a daily basis. And I think people feel that. That's just what I've tried to do. It's a little bit of who I am. And I think people respond to that.
Brent Stewart:
One of the things that, as listening to you talk, the history of our company always fascinates me. It always fascinates me that what's kind of this continual evolution. Continual evolution in terms of the business and continual evolution in terms of our leadership. And so when Bob started having these thoughts about leadership and started kind of introducing these concepts within the company, how did people react to that? How did you and how did other people of the leadership react to these thoughts that Bob would kind of almost randomly have and then present to everyone?
Tim:
I don't know. I mean, none of us were shocked or taken aback or thrown off our game. I mean, clearly, Bob's philosophies were evolving to where he felt very strongly about people and it wasn't just about numbers anymore. I would say, initially, probably like anything, you just keep doing your job and wait to make sure it's not the flavor of the day in terms of a new philosophy or strategy. It was clear early on that this wasn't going to go away. But I mean, look, a lot of our leaders cared about people, we just didn't enunciate it. I'm not sure that I made any major adjustments in my style or anything.
Brent:
Yeah. I mean, it's not revolutionary. A lot of these things are just common sense. For you guys in the leadership, it probably didn't really become really game-changing or obvious until the downturn in 2008, 2009.
Tim:
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think until 2008, 2009, probably none of us were really sure what it meant. And that was really the test for all of us in terms of how Bob would act, how we would all react to that downturn. And so I think you're right. I think that was probably what kind of cemented the culture for all of us, quite frankly, and Bob.
Brent:
When Bob brought up the idea of the furloughs, did people think, "Well, I don't know, it sounds kind of crazy," or did people really latch onto that and think, "This really could work. This really could be the way we do this?"
Tim:
Oh, I definitely think it was the latter. Everybody wanted to find a way through that crisis impacting as few people as possible. And so when the idea of furloughs was introduced, I think everybody embraced it. Everybody wanted to contribute something. And it was a little bit of the shared pain concept. I mean, everybody wanted to contribute something. Nobody wanted to see the person next to them let go or laid off, because everybody had mortgage payments, everybody had children in school, everybody had medical bills, et cetera. So sharing pain broadly and everybody taking a little, I think everybody felt pretty good about that.
Brent:
PCMC, specifically, really had this kind of family feel to it. I assume that this kind of idea of weathering this crisis had to resonate to people with that sort of bond together.
Tim:
Well, no question about it. The other thing that is unique about PCMC is it is one of the few places that we have a union. And we have significant membership in the union in PCMC. And of course we couldn't... Like changing benefits, we did not have unilateral authority to change benefits because benefits are something that you agree to contractually with a union. So when our leadership team sat down with the leaders of the union and PCMC and said, "Look, we have this concept of furloughs and we're also suspending the 401(k) match for a period of time. And we'd like to ask you to participate and help the company." The union leadership stepped up and they said, "Look, you need two to four weeks from all of our members. So you're looking for X number of weeks."
We had roughly 200 union members at the time. So we were looking for somewhere between 400 and 800 weeks of furlough. And they said, "Look, we'll get you the four to 800 weeks, but we might have some people who want to take more and some people who want to take less, but we'll get you the four to 800 weeks." And they also agreed to suspend the 401(k) match, which they didn't have to do. That was a great validation of their belief in Bob and his philosophies. A great validation of the local leadership team in Green Bay and the trust that they placed in them. And of course, we all know how the story worked out. It worked out extremely well.
Brent:
I think that just from what we were saying before, that that might've been kind of an aha moment in a lot of leaders in our company's career and maybe even yours. Are there any other kind of big moments that were kind of aha moments for you that maybe made you think or act differently or maybe make you think about leadership or business differently?
Tim:
Yeah. Yeah. That was clearly an aha moment. I think for me and probably for a lot of people, in terms of just the impact that our culture can have and how it can benefit our organization. Other aha moments, going back to something we talked about a while ago, when Bob asked me to become CFO of the company and I didn't see that in myself. I didn't see that I had the skill sets or the leadership to really make that leap. But Bob was so convincing that I took the risk and took the opportunity. That was kind of an aha moment for me that Bob probably had more confidence in me than I even had myself for that particular role.
And I would say that it caused me to maybe look at some of the people I work with a little bit differently. In terms of not just accepting them for who they are or how they see themselves, but really in terms of what their potential is. And I mean, after that, I had to talk Bill Morgan into taking the role as president of Pneumatic Scale. And later on, I had to talk Steve Kemp into taking the role of president the PCMC. In both cases, their initial reaction to me was exactly the same as my reaction to Bob. And obviously, Bill Morgan and Steve Kemp have both done outstanding jobs in their role as president. So that was an aha moment for me, what Bob taught me in terms of seeing something in somebody that they don't necessarily see in themselves.
Brent:
In your career, what are some of the things that you're most proud?
Tim:
Frankly, just being part of a leadership team that took opportunities like Pneumatic Scale in the early days, or Marquip, or PCMC, and help those businesses that were failing. And help those businesses survive and thrive and help to give people some security and a future. I mean, you can talk a lot about other accomplishments, but to me, that's probably the thing that I'm most proud of is just being part of a team that helped give people some security and a future.
Brent:
Every time I think about PCMC, I think about the story of Ken Coppens that's in the book, about him collecting cans around Lambeau Field. And I think about how PCMC changed so much. And that's a great point that you make that these companies that we came in and acquired and were able to turn around, people were... They were going through real hardships and then we were able to help stabilize-
Tim:
They had no security, right? They didn't know when the next layoff might come about and how long it might last. So it's hard to feel safe and it's hard to feel good about yourself when you're in that situation.
Brent:
Yeah.
Tim:
So just the fact that we have been able to provide some stability to those companies and provide jobs that people can count on and incomes that people can count on.
Brent:
And I think that's the thing that sometimes people often miss with Barry-Wehmiller. In terms of talking about what we teach about leadership and what we say about leadership is that people kind of latch on to the treating people well part of it, which clearly is a huge part of it. But the business piece of it really means a lot too. And it's very equal and it goes back to this providing stable lives for our people.
Tim:
Yeah. That's so important. We all know how important it is in our own lives, so... Yeah.
Brent:
Do you have any predictions of how our business or any businesses are going to change or going to look now that we've gone through this huge pandemic in the last year? Any thoughts about that?
Tim:
Certainly we've all learned a lot, right? I mean, we're using tools like this right now. I think it was Plato who said necessity is the mother of all invention. As this pandemic hit, people around the world had to find new ways to conduct their personal lives and new ways to conduct business. And a lot of our businesses were very creative and either created new tools to interface with customers and interface with each other or accelerated the use of certain tools. And I expect that a lot of this isn't going to go away. Certainly not completely and may even become a... I wouldn't say preferred method of communication because in my mind, nothing will ever replace interpersonal, face-to-face communication. There's always going to be a need for a certain level of that.
But I think it will impact the way we do business. We've done much complicated machine checkouts, remotely, which allow our customers to not have to travel great distances, sometimes even across oceans, to check out machines. So I think it will give people more freedom in terms of freeing them up from time consuming and tiring travel, to be able to devote more time in resources to things that they can do productively and the things that they enjoy doing. And hopefully have a higher quality of life and a greater sense of balance in their life.