Say What You Mean. Do What You Say.
Interviewed by Olivia Wolak

Interview with Stuart Emanuel, Interim CEO		 Date Interview: 07/22/2009
Date of Credentialing:
Credential expiration:
 

Tell us about leading a company from $25 million to $1 billion.  Please.

There was a company, Applied Information Development, which was an IT staffing and consulting company. I started out as the Director of Sales in Chicago. They were in the middle of selling the company to an Australian company called Computer Power group when I joined. There were so many broken parts to the company because they had done a few acquisitions. They started asking me to fix things. Pretty soon I was running the whole U.S.

But that didn’t get you to $1 billion.

I always agreed to go fix anything, but I never agreed to give anything up.  The company got into some fairly serious financial difficulties in Australia, so I was involved in the decision about what to do with the company.  We had huge debt.  Rupert Murdoch arranged for a $25 million loan for us from Citi bank. 

“I learned an awful lot about management and how to get the most out of people in an effective way and still leave them whole.”


What happened after that?

When the company started doing badly in Australia there was a lot of pressure on us.  There would be shouting matches in our little board room.  Because of being constantly around these casts of characters whose style, most of their styles, was fear and intimidation I learned an awful lot about management and how to get the most out of people in an effective way and still leave them whole.  

We’ll get to philosophy, first get us to the $1 billion my friend.

Somehow we managed to drag the business forward and got out of the workout department.  We agreed that we were going to sell the company: the US and Europe, which by that time I was running.

What were revenues at that point?

We were about a 47 million dollar a year business.  We were growing like crazy organically.  I had changed the whole management team over a period of years and I thought we had a really good group of people. IT was really heating up.  There were big valuations for companies that really had small revenue streams and so we picked Interim Services as the ones that should acquire us and we became Interim Technology.

So within Interim (later renamed Spherion) you hit the big time?

When I left in 2001 we had a little under a billion dollars in revenue and 65 offices in 14 countries.

Say What you Mean. Do What you Say. -- Stuart Emanuel, Interim CEO

With more than 30 years of leadership experience in the information technology services industry, Stuart Emanuel is a recognized thought leader and founder of NueVista Group, an IT consulting and services firm. Emanuel has led a $1B division of a public company, serves as senior advisor and consultant to numerous businesses, and raises capital for start-up companies in the technology and digital media space.

Nice. Let’s stay on Spherion for a bit.  How did you swap out the management team?

I was really good at picking people who would buy into a vision as opposed to people who would stand on the sidelines with their arms crossed and wait to be dragged along.  I don’t have that much use for that kind of people.  We built a plan to take the business to a much higher level and to raise gross margins, which we did.

How high?

They went from around 19-20% up to mid-30%, which in our industry was huge.  We also raised operating margins by about 10 points and took the company global.

I’m not sure what’s the bigger win, $47 million to $1 billion or those profits. It sounds like the biggest crises in that business were early on. How did you deal with that?

I tried to understand the things that we were sure were going to happen from a positive standpoint. You know, not oversell.  The tendency is to overpromise and under-deliver, so you have to make sure you do the opposite.  And consistency is the key.

“The key is honesty, integrity, and fast action.”


 

How do you stay consistent?

It’s sort of remembering what the task at hand is, what has to be accomplished, let all this flack just not penetrate you. It was a pretty interesting experience for me.

 


Agreed.  What’s your philosophy on management and leadership?

Whether you are going into a new company as a senior manager or whether you are going into an interim or consulting assignment it’s how fast you can connect with people. Within a company that is in crisis or even a company that changes a CEO or a senior executive there is so much angst and trepidation.  So the key, in my humble opinion, is honesty, integrity, and fast action.

“It’s how fast you can connect with people.”

How do you define integrity?

Integrity is everything. It’s saying what you mean and it’s doing what you say.  And it’s treating people fairly.  It’s not their fault typically that the company is sinking.  So it’s letting them know that you see value in what they are doing and in what they’ve done and making them feel that they can bring value in the future.

Why do people fail in business?

Nobody tells people what they are supposed to be doing and nobody tells them how they are being measured!  If you don’t know how you are being measured, and hardly anybody does, how are you going to be successful?  It’s hit or miss.  There are very few people hired into a company that can’t do the job.  The problem is much more about - is the leader a good communicator? Is the leader sending the right message and getting people on board?

What is the challenge of leadership?

Leadership is really easy in really good times.  Leadership is extremely difficult in tough times.  Where there is an incredible amount of pressure from external forces, the tendency would be to go out at one of those meetings and to lose it with people and to get ticked off.  That’s horrible.  

What is the key to being effective?

You’ve got to be consistent and you’ve got to treat them the same way all the time.  They have to know what to expect otherwise they will leave if they’re any good.  Here’s the worse thing…the great ones always leave when things get bad.  But guess what?  The mediocre ones always stay.

What are you passionate about?

I act.  I do a lot of commercials.  I have a Career Builder commercial on Sunday.

I’ve known you, what, 5 years, but this is news!

I used to do theater and I took a long time off and about two years ago I got really interested in resuming it.  That’s my passion.