February 2020
Leadership is More than Execution
by Rolly Dessert
As he reflected on the early days of his career at Geiger Ready-Mix, Bill Geiger showed his usual candor in a self-assessment. Having worked in various roles in the company since the age of ten, he expressed a keen awareness of Geiger's roots with a sense for how to compete for business. He drew energy from getting jobs done, faster and better than the competitors.
As a newly appointed President at age 25, Bill Geiger tended to do it all himself. "I thought good leadership meant getting new jobs, getting trucks out, delivering product to those jobs, and satisfying the customer. Now, I see that this was execution, and that leadership is more than just executing or getting things done." In the first 15 to 20 years, Geiger was growing the business but was also learning that a single-handed approach was unsustainable.
Geiger saw a growing demand in the market for quality and consistency in delivery of a product that was becoming increasingly complex. He recognized that systems and processes are essential to holding a competitive advantage and building a market position. Geiger started on a new path, acknowledging that he had to lead differently, "I got my work done through other people. I delegated. This was very hard for me to do."
Changing to a new way of operating was difficult, but Geiger worked with his leaders to create a statement of purpose: The Geiger Way. "In every endeavor, we will add value to the lives of our customers, employees and suppliers in a positive and professional manner." They also developed core values:
- We will be "On Time and Hustle"
- Honesty and Integrity will guide us in all we do.
- We will seek continuous improvement.
- We will compete for profits that are necessary to reach our goals.
- We will show respect for our community and environment.
Over time, Bill Geiger succeeded in communicating these values as well as his vision for a continuous, coordinated effort across all of Geiger Ready-Mix. Long-time managers were used to the old way of doing things and resisted change. In Geiger's mind, the old way was no longer relevant, and had to change. He saw that performance was improving but if Geiger Ready-Mix was to meet its potential it needed to be one team. He faced major challenges.
- The first challenge was the independence of each plant and location. Each plant endeavored to produce high quality mixes and offer great customer service but with its own processes and cultures; Geiger Ready-Mix was four separate companies. Bill Geiger's insistence on a cohesive team doing business as one Geiger culture with standardized processes at all four plants led to better cooperation and collaboration.
- The second challenge was the lack of a centralized dispatch function. Until 1987, each plant had its own dispatchers, but no method to monitor another plant's trucks doing jobs in their territory. Bill created a Central Dispatch to manage and coordinate each truck's location and assignment so that plant managers would share drivers, trucks, and sales people with other plants. This resulted in more efficient use of resources, reduced costs, and better teamwork among managers.
- The third challenge was to leverage the coupling of centralized management with standardized processes in a new operational approach to achieve greater efficiency. Geiger started keeping score of the number of on-time deliveries and providing daily feedback to every member of every team — Dispatch, Sales, Plant Operators, Mechanics, and most of all, the Delivery Professionals (the DP).
The role of the Geiger DP is vital to this new way of operating. Once the mix is in the truck, the DP has a 31-step checklist to follow before departing the plant. At the job site, the DP engages a customer, shares expertise, and communicates core values with a mindset of mental hustle — to move quickly and effectively, but not hurriedly, through all steps with a posture of anticipation, engagement, and focus. Bill Geiger and his team of plant managers communicated these high expectations to the DPs. This was raising the bar to a new level.
A recent job supporting the construction of a major manufacturing facility illustrates the success of the new Geiger Ready-Mix approach. This job involved ten separate pours of 50,000 square feet each, every one of which was completed in five hours. This required delivering 200 cubic yards (400 tons) per hour using 25 trucks, starting at 2:00 am. In this large, demanding pour they would unload two and sometimes three trucks at a time. The most impressive aspect of this job was the precise timing and coordination of batching, loading, quality checks, travel time, set-up, pour, rinse-down, return to the plant and load again; while preventing bottlenecks and gaps in the flow of delivery. This takes a true team of teams — cooperation and collaboration at the highest level.
Geiger rightly pays tribute to his people for the company's record of success. "I used the core values to show our employees and customers how Geiger was different, how it competed." Once Bill linked the vision and the core values, the response was positive both externally in the market and internally with the Geiger culture — a team of teams. In Geiger's view, "Doing all of that allowed me to develop a more effective level of leadership."
Bill Geiger deserves credit for humbly recognizing the need to change his approach, and for having the courage to follow through. His company is clearly on a path for future growth.
