Meet Mark Lecher, President & CEO of HFI

[Transcript]

00:04

Welcome to the Finding Gravitas podcast brought to you by Gravitas Detroit. Looking to become a more authentic leader? Finding Gravitas is the podcast for you. Gravitas is the ultimate leadership quality that draws people in. It's an irresistible force encompassing all the traits of authentic leadership.

Join your podcast host Jan Griffiths, that passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, entrepreneur, leadership coach, keynote speaker, one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry, as she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for Gravitas.

Jan: 00:50

Today, you'll meet Mark Lecher. Mark is the President and CEO of HFI, a supplier of interior automotive products. Mark, by his own admission came from the poor side of the tracks. From the have nots, as he puts it. He started work at age 12, and then his career took him into accounting. And we'll explore why leadership is about much, much more than the numbers. And he should know since he started his career in accounting with PwC, worked his way up to CFO and then moved into a broader business leadership role. You'll hear about constancy of purpose and how Mark learned about the significance of establishing your true north. You'll hear about coaching people’s “want to”. I love that, their “want to”. Mark truly is an authentic leader. Mark Lecher, welcome to the show.

Mark: 01:51

Jan, thanks for having me. I'm very honored to be here.

Jan: 01:54

It's great to have you.

Mark: 01:55

It's not something I'm normally you know, I'm not… something a little bit different for me, but I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

Jan: 02:04

You're not one of those big sort of media promotional, self-promotional kinda guys, are you?

Mark: 02:09

Not at all. Not at all.

Jan: 02:11

That's why it's great to have you on the show. And thank you for giving Finding Gravitas, your time and energy. Let's get into it. And let's go right back to the beginning. Where does your story start? Let's hear about your story.

Mark: 02:29

Well, I would say I could summarize my story quickly by saying I grew up in a blue-collar environment, in industrial town in Central Pennsylvania. And because of that upbringing, I really learned the importance of hard work, and perseverance and the desire to succeed. Now, why is that? I grew up in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Not much really, you know, in Pottsville, it’s a coal region town about 90 miles from Philadelphia and two hours from New York City. But believe me, it's a lot further away than just that time and travel distance. I was born, my parents, Joseph and Nancy Lecher, my dad quit school in the ninth grade, my mom quit school in the 10th grade. And as a result, they learned to work hard.

We grew up definitely on the I would say the poor side of the tracks. And with that, I think, you know, it really, in a small town, in a small town at that time, there definitely was a clear delineation between the haves and have nots. And we were definitely on the side of the have nots. In fact, I remember when I was really young, we were out at the hamburger stand downtown, and we're having lunch and my mom, my aunt, and a couple of my cousins, my sisters and I, and there was, my mom got up and she went over to the booth next door, and she got into a bit of an argument with the lady in the next booth over and when she came back, she had overheard the lady saying that people from my part of town shouldn't be allowed to vote, because we were uneducated. And I really sent my mom off. And, you know, that's one of the things I think, you know, we grew up with that kind of backdrop, a little bit of needing to prove ourselves. You know, in the early 70s, the economy wasn't doing very well. My dad was out of work. And we received food stamps in the mail. And my mom walked my sister and I down to the welfare office, went up to the counter and returned the food stamps and said, We don't need these. And so I learned that we have to take care of our own. We have to we have to, you know, do it on our own. It's, you've got everything within you to be successful. And so that's how, you know, the foundation of how I grew up, which is hard work and self reliance.

I started working when I was about 12 years old. My uncle had a small corner grocery store, we sold penny candy, you know, milk, bread, cigarettes, things like that. And I loved the store growing up. On my way to elementary school, I used to stop at the store every day and go there for lunch. And so when I was around 12, I pestered my uncle and said, hey, Tom, can I can I work at the store this summer. And he reluctantly said, Okay. I worked probably 20 to 30 hours, we opened at 6. And normally I'd be there, you know, 10 minutes to 6. And it was important, we opened at 6, because a lot of the factory workers would come by on their way to work for a snack or something for lunch. And so being there on time being present, was very important. And I loved working at the store was just a whole, you know, just a whole collection of just interesting characters from the neighborhood that would come by. Of all different types of people, and so you learn how to deal with different people, whether it's a supplier, or its business person, or it's a, you know, somebody's just going to work for the day, or some kids coming in with a couple pennies, and they want to buy some candy. So I love that. In fact when I was at that age, I said to my uncle, I wanted to take over the store someday. Because to me, that was really exciting. And then I enjoy, in fact, I still have one of our old crank cash registers in my house here, that reminds me of those days.

After high school, I went to the Pennsylvania State University, where I met my wife. And I studied accounting. And after graduating, I went to work with PricewaterhouseCoopers, what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers in Philadelphia, in their emerging Business Services Group, I enjoyed it, I stayed much longer than I thought, you know, a lot of times people go into public accounting and spend two years, get their CPA move on, but I really enjoyed it. I had, my client base was a lot of small, mid-size manufacturing companies. And what I enjoyed about is I got to see the whole business. In some of my colleagues who were on the larger fortune 500 type companies, they would spend the whole audit cycle, just looking at cash or something like that. Whereas I got to see everything. And I enjoyed that.

About the time my wife and I were getting married, I got an opportunity to work with Cal Corporation, Cal is a large Japanese multinational company, and I started first in Wilmington, Delaware, and ended up in the chemical division down in North Carolina. And we were going through transition, or the chemical division was transitioning from being a family owned business to being part of a large corporation. And so a lot of the stuff, I would say, that you would expect to be in place in the business world that were not there, we didn't have an MRP system, we didn't have a costing system, we didn't fully understand everything. So it was really exciting to be part of that transformation of that business, from a family owned business to a more well structured business.

I also had the opportunity in that role to work with a fantastic president Harvey Loud. And Harvey is very unassuming you and talking about authentic leader, Harvey is an authentic leader, very unassuming. But what's interesting is, we were not doing well at that time. We were getting… the business was going through a transition. And Harvey, we would have our staff meetings and Harvey would put up a slide of a yacht, and it was vectoring through towards the goal. And I would, I was assistant controller at the time, I was younger in my career, and I would say to my boss, why does Harvey keep putting up the picture of the yacht doesn't he know we're losing money? I mean, come on. This is crazy. Let's get on with it. There's more important things. But he did it. He did it all the time. He started every meeting with that. And I came later on to reflect and understand what he was doing was he was setting the constancy of purpose, the vision, the true north, of where we're going, and that, yes, there's a lot going on around us. But somebody at the, you know, leading the ship has to maintain that constancy of purpose of where we're trying to go to keep people focused on the fact that it is going to be better, we are going to get through this. So that was a really great opportunity for me.

We also had a fantastic head of HR at Cal and is named Bob Morton. And Bob did a very good job of helping coach up our leadership team, our supervisors and leadership team really, really learned the importance of getting people's “want to”, you know, the ability to really connect with people everywhere in the organization to understand what's going on. Because if you can get people's “want to”, you get very powerful as an organization, and Bob was fantastic about that. And so to me, you know, early in my career coming out of public accounting, that was a fantastic pivot for me to develop early in my career, some of the leadership skills that I think I carry with me still today and no I carry with me still today.

After I left Cal Corporation, I was looking I got an opportunity to go and become CFO of a company which is now called GST auto leather, I first joined as CFO and I was thrown right into the heat. We were part of a public company, and three days after I joined, the chairman of our holding company said, they're going to spin off our division. So we didn't have a strategy, we didn't have a budget on, you know, a mid range budget plan or anything like that. So I had to quickly figure out what's going on in the business. And it forced me to get out on the production floor, out on the sales team out in the engineering area, and understand the business so I could put together a strategy plan. So I'm at the time, I'm probably 33-34. And, you know, three months after joining the company, I'm in New York City talking to a bunch of Wall Street analysts about why they should invest in our company, at a time where everything, if it didn't have “dot-com” at the end of it, nobody was interested in it, here's this old line, automotive leather company that like, who wants to invest in it.

d China. And this was in late: 1999

And so after about a year and a half, two years I was asked to take over running the business. At that point, I was about 36 or so and was thrust into the role of leading the P&L, and it was not something that I really knew because, you know, for me, being CFO, everything was very clear, was black and white, you know, the numbers. And to me, when I looked at my boss, it seemed to me very clear that this is what we should do. I’d sometimes get frustrated, I didn't understand why he wouldn't make a decision this way or that way. But after I, after I assumed the role of President I fully understood, there's a lot of gray area when you're in leadership. And that was, it was a good experience for me. Ran GST, we pivoted that business some and, and then serendipity is the way it is I had a chance to go to China with one of our partners there did some acquisitions of state owned enterprises in the Shanghai area came back and now am. President and CEO of HFI, we're tier two interior trim company. So long story short, that's kind of my career, I'm fortunate to have people who believed in me, gave me opportunities. And I was, my parents, my parents, you know, at least imbued in me, I’m smart enough to know when there's a good opportunity, and let's take that chance. That's my story.

Jan: 13:44

That's a that's a fascinating story. And I want to go back to the beginning for a moment. You obviously defied, I call it defying conventional wisdom, but I had much the same situation. Growing up as a farmer's daughter. I was expected to follow you know, a certain routine and marry back into farming, because that's what you do when you live in a farming community. Right. So there was a limiting belief that was in my head that I was not supposed to be a leader in the automotive industry. You had some of that going on with you, too. Right? You were, when you were growing up, you never saw yourself, I'm sure as a leader in the automotive industry. When you took those early steps, way back when, how did you break through those limiting beliefs and stop them from constraining you?

Mark: 14:38

To me, it's really a desire to prove people wrong, I think, at the end of the day. You know, when I was in high school, I remember going to our guidance counselor and asking them about college options. And they looked at me and they looked at my profile, they saw where I was from, they said, are you sure? College? Maybe you want to go to trade school? And I said, no, I'm going to college. And you know, my mom, particularly my mom expected us to do well, we were expected to do well, we were expected to try to continue to get better. And so I've carried that with me throughout my life. And so it is a bit of a, you know, a desire to prove people wrong. And, you know, serendipity is the way it is I, I wouldn't I definitely did not expect to be here, where I'm at today, I just, I worked hard and opportunities, as I said, came up. Go back to my boss at Cal Corp when I became president at GST. I remember calling him and saying, hey, Harvey, can you believe it? They made me president I got lucky. And he said, Mark, why is it? Why is it always the people work the hardest had the best luck? And so that I think, you know, ultimately, it was just that desire to advance the ball advanced in my life to do something different.

Jan: 16:01

Yeah, I love the fact that you grew up in the world of accounting, you know, and then you realized that leadership is so much more than the numbers. And that's what authentic leadership is all about. Right? It's much, much more than just the P&L the balance sheet, you know, it's much more than the numbers. It's about engaging people and getting people behind a vision. And I love that you learn that early on with Harvey. How do you now take that and galvanize people around your vision at HFI? How do you do that?

Mark: 16:39

I think as a leader, you have to be a servant leader. First, people need to see that you are going to be a servant leader, you display the empathy, I guess, for me, I, one of the books I think is really a fantastic book is definitely, you know, Michael Collins Good to Great book. And, you know, for me, the question is, how do I become closer and closer to being a level five leader where you've got the personal humility and the professional will to win. And so for me, when I am building our team, or we're, you know, we're talking together as a team, it's really I want to get our team together and build that cohesive leadership team. I tried to do it through, you know, through being steadfast and where we're trying to go, having a vision where we're trying to go, get everybody involved, it's not just, you know, I want us to own it as a team. And, I want us to be driven to work together where we have each other's back. And I guess, you know, for me, I'm, what I tried to do is possibly push the boundaries of what we're supposed to be doing. And ultimately, my, I believe this true for every leader, your number one job is to help your team be successful. And if you can do that well, and you allocate the resources they need to be successful, you're going to be powerful.

I'll tell you a story. When I was at GST we were going through a transition from being kind of an old leather business to trying to be an engineered automotive component. Because I realized that the way we were doing things, we were not always been able to consistently provide the quality of product that our customer was looking for. We were dealing with BMW and Lexus, and Acura and all these top brands. But some of our development capabilities were lacking. And so one of the areas I wanted to invest in was our product development area and our material lab particularly. And so one of the first things we did was we brought in a new leader of this, I'll call him Dr. Bob. And I like to go see, meet people when they first come on board, introduce myself to them learn their story, and let them understand or try to share with them the vision where we're trying to take the company. And at the end of all that, Dr. Bob looked at me and said, Mark, what do you need for me? And I said, Dr. Bob, I only need one thing from you. Never start a sentence, if that's what you want me to do. As a leader, your job, I believe is to come to me and say, Mark, this is what I need you to do. Because my job is to help you be successful. And if you don't tell me what you need, then I can't help you. And I said, You know, I have my cell phone with me, you know, pretty much 24/7. If I'm not getting it done, you have every right to come up and call me out on it. That's okay. So to me, I think going back to your question, as a leader, trying to build a team, you have to demonstrate that you're willing to be a servant leader, you have empathy and you're going to do what can, you're going to help your team get to where they want to go.

Jan: 19:40

Do you ever worry or are you ever concerned about coming across as being weak? If you operate a servant leadership mentality is where we're in this industry automotive which as we know is got a reputation for being tough and aggressive. And there's a leadership model out there that would say no, to be a leader, you got to be at the head of the table pounding your fist, and putting out orders and directives. Now, I know we've come a long way since then, but there's still an element of that out there. And there is a fear that if you employ more of a servant leadership type philosophy, that you may be considered weak. Did you ever think about that? And how did you overcome that?

Mark: 20:24

Yeah, I think, you know, it's one of the things you think about as anybody in leadership probably, at some point, you know, people expect you because of a title, you have, to behave a certain way or dress a certain way, or look a certain way, and, you know, I think, probably early on, I tried to figure out, okay, I've got to play this part. But when you're playing a part, you're not being yourself, and to me, it just doesn't work. And if you can't understand that, then I don't think you're going to be effective. I don't know, that kind of model of trying to be command and control, and it's my way or the highway, just doesn't work. Especially it doesn't work today, with the you know, the changing demographics in the workforce, a lot of the younger associates coming into the business, they have a different, they have something different in terms of what they're looking for, the “why” that they're looking for in their careers. And if you don't adjust, you're not going to be successful.

Jan: 21:25

So I'm particularly interested in a story that you shared with me during your time as a CFO, and it was something that you learned about the role of the sales team. You know, so often in my career I've come across CFOs are always questioning the bottom line, its the bottom line number, and you know, how much money you spend on expenses, and very, very narrow, you know, sort of focus. But tell me about, share that story, if you would, please.

Mark: 21:53

Sure. So, you know, as the CFO, you're looking at the numbers, and you know, you end up starting to focus on things that you think are important. And we had a bunch of traveling salespeople that traveled throughout the south, southeast part of the United States, and, you know, we're getting their expense reports and you start questioning why are you spending this money? Why are you doing this, you know, was this meal a little bit more expensive than it should be. And, you know, you start creating, you're not creating that kind of connection you need to do across your organization. And so, went to our head of sales and said, I want to understand what's going on within the sales team, and actually spend some windshield time with the sales team going out on the road making calls, and trying to understand what it is that they do. And I realized after that it's a pretty hard job, you know, when you're going from day to day, for weeks on end away from your family, you're staying at the local Holiday Inn, and you're eating probably not the best sometimes. And it's just, it's a grind, and so I came back and I said, Okay, this isn't, you know, unless there's something really outrageous, I'm not going to beat somebody up on a $5 expense that’s maybe a little bit higher than I think it should be, I wasn't there, I wasn't the one doing it. So, to me, I think it's important as a finance person, that you get out beyond your computer, beyond the desk and actually go walk the floor, go out with the sales team, go spend time in the R&D area, understand what's really driving the business.

You know, actually, when I was at Coopers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, I had a client, chemical client that had bought another business from somebody else, and there was a period of time that the other, the selling company, had to operate the business. And so at the end of two years, we came in on behalf of our client to audit the two year period to see if there were expenses allocated to them that they should not have been allocated. And we went through, it was it was a long, laborious audit, we came up with a couple million dollars of things that shouldn't have been allocated to them. So we were very proud, we thought we did our job. And what was interesting is our client ended up negotiating away the $2 million. And I was dumbfounded like, how could they do that? Well, realizing in the office next to us was this chemical engineer, quiet individual just doing his calculations, and he realized that the material yields that they were getting from their chemical batches were off by just a fraction of a percent from what was represented in the contract, sales contract. Well, that was a lot more money than what we found. And it made me realize, Wow, we didn't really understand the business. We did not understand the business. And so I think as a finance person what I tried to carry with me is, how I go and learn the business. And the way I do that is by going out and being in the business.

Jan: 24:45

Yeah, it's great, great leadership advice, and I absolutely love, love, love that story. Because it also goes back to this issue of trust, right? We hire people into our companies. You have to trust them and that doesn't mean that you give them an open checkbook, but there has to be some level of trust that they will be good stewards of the company's money and of time. And if they don't, if they're not, then you have to deal with that, that's a separate discussion. But when people try to micromanage every single penny on everybody's expense reports that drives me absolutely insane, because it says there's no trust there. So how do you show your people now in your company, that level of trust? How do you how do you nurture that, because it's not something, you know, just happens overnight. And it's something that you nurture over time.

Mark: 25:39

I think how you demonstrate trust with your team members is, I'd say, welcoming people to come forward and take ownership of areas and then giving them that latitude to be successful in their endeavors. Now, in my career, I worked with an individual he had a saying, which I really think is a great saying, WWWH, it's not about who, it's what happened, why it happened, how do we fix it? And so creating a culture, creating an environment where people can take ownership and do things, and if they make a mistake, because we all make mistakes, right? Nobody's perfect. And so if they make a mistake, be willing to come forward, understand that the organization is not going to penalize you, right? Come forward, say, hey, here's what happened. Here's what I was thinking, okay? How do we fix this, we make sure that we learn from this, put it in our knowledge base, and let's move forward. And if you do that, if you do that consistently, and you do it sincerely, people start to buy in, they understand it's not fake, it's real. You want people to understand that they own it. It's their business, just like it is anybody else's business, we all are in this together.

Jan: 26:53

It seems to me, Mark that you're a naturally authentic leader, you know, it comes fairly easy to you to be authentic. It's part of who you are. It's your value system. It started, you know, at the very beginning right of your story. But as you look back on your career and your leadership experience right now, what does Authentic Leadership mean to you? What are the most important traits that resonate with you about authentic leadership?

Mark: 27:27

I think, you know, going back to being a true servant leader, and displaying empathy, I think is, you know, two of the real hallmarks of somebody who is an authentic leader. And, you know, ultimately going into it with the idea that my job is to help advance the company, and the best way I can do that is by helping my team be successful. And that to me, is I think, ultimately, what I believe is, what it means to be an authentic leader, is you've come in with a real servant leadership of how can I help? How can I help my team be successful? How can I help advance the business in a positive way and create a culture environment? I, you know, one of the things I've learned since what I'd like to see is, I this has been in my career, my part of my career, part of my, my journey, I guess, is I want to create a culture, I want to create a company where if anybody did leave our company, they left saying, You know what, I left here better than when I got here. And I believe if we do that well, they won't want to leave, because they're not going to get that anywhere else. And to me, if you go in there with that kind of thought process, I think you really can help the team. And to me that's really being authentic, how do I help my team be successful?

Jan: 28:45

Yeah, it really is about the mindset, right? the mindset that you bring. And that starts with who you are, as an individual. Mindset, I believe is very important in how you start your day, every day. You can either choose to set yourself up for success, or you can just stumble through the day or you can be a victim. You know, we all get to choose the mindset that we have for a given day. How do you start your day and make sure that your mind is in the right place?

Mark: 29:21

Sure. So I had a chance to take a Dale Carnegie class when I was younger, and I recall a quote from one of his books. And it says every day is a new life to wise person. So to me every day you have to reset, you start the day with a fresh set of optimism for the day being a great day. For me, I am I think very deliberate in my day, I get up at the same time every day. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. And I try to get to work at the same time every day, typically, you know before 7, normally, you know 6:30-6:45 try to get in to the office. And then from there, I'd like to go through my morning routine of, you know, looking at any overnight emails, checking our daily KPIs that are coming out from our business intelligence systems, catching up on the Wall Street Journal, some of the highlights from there, some of the trade industry stuff that's going on, particularly now with the microchip issue and some of the other supply issues that's obviously very impactful for our industry. So trying to be very mindful that so that I can get off the day on a good path. So I try to, for me, in the day and trying to be very deliberate about what I do. And, you know, some people might say, that's boring. The podcaster. Jocko Willick, a former Navy SEAL, he has a great saying, discipline is freedom. And I do believe that if you take care of some of these, you know, things that everybody has to do and you have a routine about it, then you free your mind to focus on the more important things that are impacting the business.

Jan: 30:57

Yeah, it's about creating those habits, right?

Mark: 31:00

Yes. In fact, Ben Franklin, I don't know if you know, Ben Franklin used to have his virtues that he used to measure himself on every day. And I think it's important for people to kind of have standard work in what they do.

Jan: 31:12

Yeah, yeah, I know that, for me, when the pandemic hit, when you run your own business, it's pretty easy to just to slide, right. I mean, there's, there's no sort of corporate agenda or natural start to the day, I can run whatever schedule I want. And I knew that I would have trouble when the pandemic started. So that's why I started the Accountability Lab, where a group of people, and we still run it today, so over a year, we've been running it for over a year, we get together, and we make commitments on what we're going to do for the day and establish the mindset, because that's it, you can elevate your day and set yourself up for success. And you know, Mark, I'm sure you've noticed this, but when you have that approach in that mindset, when you go in, the days when we were all in the office, when you go into the office, or you go into the plant that's infectious, right? People feel that, they sense that, they feel that, you know, you've got the sense of positivity, right, that your energy is in the right place, and then that, they feed off of that, and I love that about being a leader is you could really help other people actually have a better day. Do you find that to be true?

Mark: 32:24

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you know, being able to walk around, talk to the folks on the floor, ask them how they're doing, how's your family, you know, it's a great way to build connections. But also, let everybody know that you're all in. You know, during the pandemic first started, I still kept going in the office, you know, we moved towards a flexible work environment. And if people weren't comfortable coming in, then so be it. We still were operating. And because the industry was still operating. And I made a point, when I got in, to walk the production floor, I wanted the team to understand, the folks that were out there making our products, that I'm here, we're here, you're not, you're not alone, we're all in this. And we've got your back. And I think it's important when you when you can get out and get to the plant and see what's going on the production floor, it's very important to build those connections.

Jan: 33:16

That's the second time you said we've got your back. And I believe that that's one of the most powerful things a leader can ever say, to their team. Because you're providing psychological safety. You're telling somebody that it's all going to be okay, so you're providing a sense of calm, which I think is very important for a leader, a sense of confidence, but you're providing safety. So you're saying whatever happens, it's all gonna be okay. And those words are very simple. It's very simple sentence. But it's so very powerful when it comes out of the leader, because what you're saying is, if you make a mistake, I'm not going to take your head off. And I believe in you, and I'm committed to getting through this pandemic or whatever crisis we're faced with. And just those that little phrase right there. We've got your back, I've got your back. I think it's so incredibly powerful. I wish leaders would say it more often.

Mark: 34:20

I agree, I agree. It is, it is very powerful. When you can get everybody connected, you know, get people's “want to” to help the company be successful. I think everybody comes to work, wanting to do better, you know, for whatever it is. I mean, you know, when I was a young leader at GST, and I took over in the company, I'd walk our production floor and I, you know, talk to the team members on the floor. You know, a lot of those folks were like my dad and mom, you know, they were people that were coming to work, they want to make a fair wage for a fair day's pay. They wanted to try to balance their family's stature in whatever way they felt was the right thing. And so it was important for us to try to you know, make sure that you're providing an environment for them to be successful.

Jan: 35:03

Authentic Leadership we've talked about, as you well know, I define the hallmark of authentic leadership as Gravitas, and Gravitas, don't look for the dictionary definition, because it's my definition. So as the hallmark of authentic leadership, it's that feeling that you get when you're in the room with a leader, and you just know you're drawn to them, right, that you'll do anything for them, you know, they've got your back, you know that they support you. And it's that person that you'll probably work for again and again, in your career. What is, if you were to describe that in one or two sentences, what is Gravitas to you?

Mark: 35:45

Well, you know, it's interesting, that's, you know, when people think of somebody as Gravitas, they think that when they come into the room, they kind of, you know, they are the center of attention. That's not, that's not who I believe, you know, that's not me, as a leader, I'm not that person. To me, again, it comes in of just, you know, a seriousness to it and a sense of responsibility. And people understand that you take your role seriously, and you take it, you take responsibility. And so you're so you're sincere about it. And I think if you look at it that way, in terms of, you know, being respectful, sincere and understanding the responsibility, and you're treating people with dignity and respect, I think that starts to set people off in terms of they understand that, as a leader, you're, you're there for the right reasons. And so, to me, that's what Gravitas means. It means coming in and, you know, having that respect and sincerity and responsibility about your role. I do think though, there's another virtue out there, right? The Roman virtue of comitas, which is humor, I do think part of it is you have to be, have a sense of humor as well, right? You have to have fun, we, everybody works so hard, they put so much into it. There's so much stress today, that if you don't have a little bit of fun, then that takes away from the whole experience as well.

Jan: 37:04

Yes, and you're right. Gravitas was indeed defined as a Roman virtue, one of the Roman virtues that many people in that society aspired to, and it was it was something that they all talked about, and I'm bringing it back. Considering your background, as a CFO, I know I keep harping on this. You're obviously into the numbers. And I don't think I'd want to be the CFO working for you, because you're going to be all over it. But that's natural, right? That's, that's your background. How do you keep looking onward and upward as a leader? Keeping looking forward, instead of you know, getting down into the weeds because I always found that that was such a difficult balance, right? You know that you want to spend time with the people on the shop floor, you want to spend time with your direct reports, one on one, right? That's leadership. That's what it is. But there's this tendency to want to go down into the detail, particularly if there's a crisis situation, I found that balancing that is sometimes difficult. How do you how do you balance that?

Mark: 38:20

Yeah, it's, that is that dynamic tension between the operational imperative and the strategically significant, and that is a challenge as a leader that you have to constantly, constantly work through, because there are times where you do need to be involved in what is operational imperatives in the business, but you can't lose sight of that strategically significant stuff at well, that's going to drive the business forward longer term. First thing I think, is you need to have a strong team. It's, I can't emphasize enough the need to be relentlessly building your team. And you know, folks who are on my team, as I tell them this, when I when I evaluate people, I evaluate people really based on really two things, not any one thing they do, but the people and processes they put in place to get things done. And so I want our leadership team strong leadership teams putting in place the right structures, the right teams, so we can get things done. If we do that, then you start to free up time. And if you can push the decision making, the empowerment down in the organization so that the right level in the organization is taking care of what needs to be taken care of. Then that starts to free you up to do other things. So you can pay attention to it you know, there's daily work where you make sure that everything's on tack, you know, track you're not, you're not missing shipments and your quality metrics are where you want to be and things like that. But now you can, it frees you up to do the work that is more, that is important towards you know, moving the business more forward than just looking you know, kind of, instead of looking at your shoes, you're looking ahead of where you're going.

Jan: 39:58

Yeah, well said. I find that young leaders often say to me that they know they need to delegate, you know, they know they need to empower people on their team. But they're afraid to do that, because they know that they're on the hook for the results for that given team or function, whatever part of the business they're working in. And therefore, they tend to micromanage and hold on to the responsibility because they're afraid to delegate. What advice would you give to those young leaders who are perhaps dealing with that dilemma right now?

Mark: 40:29

I think it's something that's very common actually. And I think, you know, even you know, for me being in a more of a middle market manufacturing company, there are times where I find myself, hey, I'm getting into some detail, I need to kind of pull back out and make sure that it's properly placed in the organization. I think the biggest thing is make sure that you are relentless in building the right leadership team, and then pushing down that, and understanding that people are going to make mistakes, you might push something down. You know, it's interesting. There's a great book called the entrepreneurs dilemma, the E myth, if you ever heard that book by, by Michael Gerber, and I read that many years ago. And it talks about the entrepreneurs dilemma is the fact that a lot of people go into business like somebody, hey, you're really great. I think the example in the book is, you're really great at baking cakes, you should go start a bake shop, right? And people go and they start a bake shop. And then six months into it, they hate baking cakes. Why? Because they have to bake the cakes, and they have to run the business, they have to do all this. The thing that you're best at if you can't give up the thing you're best at, you're going to constantly in that struggle being pulled back into an area that you don't really want that you're not really helping the organization.

Jan: 41:41

Yeah, that's well said. And you know, Mark, I've learned that myself, all the years in automotive, being responsible for large teams of people, global teams of people, I never had any problem, empowering other people never, never, never, never. And now that it's my own business? Oh, I want to hold on to everything I could, I can't believe sometimes I look at myself, I think, why are you doing this? You don't need to be doing this. Now, I'm getting better. But I never thought that I would struggle with that. But I am. So the struggle is real. And I think that you know, you just have to you just have to do it right? You just have to put it out there. You have to first and foremost. So you're right, you have to have a good team around you. And if you ever interviewing somebody and you ever get that feeling in your gut that something isn't right. don't hire them, please. Because whatever that your gut is telling you, even though you might not be able to articulate it, it will come back and bite you. Is that true?

Mark: 42:44

That is so true. I think a lot of times people, you look back on some decisions, you realize, you know whether it's a personal decision or other decisions that a lot of times your gut was more often correct than not correct.

Jan: 42:59

Yeah, that's right. And sometimes we're in such a rush to hire somebody, right? We want to we want to fill the position. So we think, Oh, well, they're close enough. They'll be they'll be okay, right there, we can get them in that position. And then you know, that you rush the decision, and it's much better to wait and find the right person for the job than it is to fill a position just to get a warm body in there. Yeah, as I'm speaking from experience, I've done it all, made all those mistakes. But that's how we learn, right?. And leadership is a process. It is a learning process. And your leadership has evolved clearly, you've talked about how it's evolved over time. So as you look back, on your career, if you were to give advice to your 25 year old self today, in today's environment, what would you say to 25 year old Mark?

Mark: 44:01

I would say, you know, have courage, take some risks. You know, when you're younger, you have opportunities to make some mistakes sometimes, you know, I know for me when I came out of Penn State you know, I didn't have any money I had to get a car you know, it was like, Okay, I gotta go and start making money and you start getting like focused on that. And I think if I look back, I was a boy, you know, if I taken maybe some risks. Now granted, my life work is you know, fantastic. I've got a great a great role. I love the company I'm with got a great team, you know, great marriage, we have great kids, you know, all that. But I think and I'm so I tell my children, is take some risks when you're younger in life, because you can make some, you can make some mistakes and still recover, you have time to recover. So take some risks. Believe in yourself. You're stronger, you're better, you're smarter than you probably sometimes give yourself credit for. Everyone has self doubt. And, you know, it was interesting There was a gentleman that when I was in this Dale Carnegie class, he was very, very confident in himself. Right? He came in every day wear a nice suit. And he's very confident. And we broke up in small groups. And I said to Wayne, you're so confident he goes, Mark, that's not me. He was I put the suit on everyday, because when I put the suit on, I'm putting on this person that you're seeing, He said, it reminds me of who I am. And so you know, even the person that I thought, Boy, this person's really all together, they're very confident, they have some self doubt. So believe in yourself. Take time, enjoy what's really important, you know, especially your family and your friends. And I think you have to continue to work on yourself to get better every day. I'm in my late 50s now, and I mean, every day, I still am doing something to try to learn something new. And I think you have to have that. So that's what I would tell myself if I were 25 again.

Jan: 45:56

Yeah, I think that's great advice, right? You've got to keep striving for something else, and something else is something else and keep that continuous improvement of yourself going. And I found that often when I was in a corporate role, because I was so focused on the business at hand that I wouldn't spend as much time maybe researching improvement and different skill sets and reading different books. You know, you mentioned Jocko, I've, read most of his books, and I follow his work quite closely. But you don't you know, when you're in the in the work environment, sometimes there's a tendency to just stay focused on the work and not focus on some of these other aspects that would help us improve. And I think you got to, it's a commitment. Right, you got to make the time to do that. Mark, the pandemic, has it changed you?

Mark: 46:52

I think, yeah. For sure. I mean, the pandemic was, I could still remember, you know, vividly being up at 3am, writing a letter to my team saying, you know, this is when the NBA canceled that season, I'm like, Okay, this is pretty big. This is something none of us have ever seen before. And how are we going to deal with this. And at first, you know, I went into the office every day, and we went to virtual, we told people, they can work from home, they didn't have to come in. But I felt it important to go in every day. And I just had my routine. And so I kept going in and you know, at first it was it was really kind of jarring, because you're in the office, and there's really not many other people around, I love the interaction with the team. And so when you're missing that, and I think as it evolved, we learned a couple things. And I learned a couple things. Number one is, you know, the flexible work environment can work, I think it's something that our team definitely embraces. And so where it makes sense, we are going to continue to do that. For me, you know, instead of, you know, going in everyday Fridays, maybe I'll work from home, and I can get a little bit of an earlier jump on the weekends. Instead of I get home Friday night at 7, I’m here, and we can have an earlier night and enjoy, enjoy a little bit more. My wife and I like to walk so you know, maybe be able to get out a little bit earlier and walk and get some exercise in is also been very helpful. I think as a business, we learned that we were more prepared than we thought, over the last couple of years, we've invested into our IT infrastructure. And so I think we were well positioned to pivot towards the virtual workplace. And I think it's still evolving, I think a lot of companies are evolving. And as the pandemic is shifting a little bit with some of the relaxing of some of the strict lockdown standards and the masking and all that, we're actually sending out today to our team saying this, we're going to continue on this flexible workspace, if it's working for you and your team. We're going to continue to embrace that. And I think people really appreciate it. Definitely people, I would say our team members, there is a sense that you know, people do miss the office interaction. So we try to once a month, you know, kind of have a picnic and invite everybody in come in on Wednesday, we're gonna have, you know, maybe we'll have subs brought in or something like that. So people can connect a little bit more, one on one in person than just on a zoom meeting or teams meeting.

Jan: 49:17

Yes, the pandemic has changed us.. As you look out to the rest of your career, what is your legacy? What legacy Do you want to leave in the working world?

Mark: 49:33

On the working world, I would say, you know, I go back to, you know, I left things better than what I got there. I like for anybody. If when somebody leaves an organization and people can genuinely reflect on their time at that organization say they helped advance the ball. I think that's a great compliment. And so for me, that's really what I would like my legacy from my career standpoint, but you know, for me, the more important legacy is the legacy I leave personally in making sure that I was, you know, considered a good husband, a good father who provided a great foundation for my children to be able to, you know, pursue their paths.

Jan: 50:16

What a beautiful way to end. Mark, thank you very much for your time today. It's been a pleasure.

Mark: 50:22

Thank you. I've enjoyed it very much.

Dietrich: 50:28

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