Dominic Faccone came to Core Furnace Systems six years ago to pare off unrelated businesses, focus the company on its core
competencies and, in the process, take the company to profitability. With the discipline of planning and the close monitoring of
those plans, the company is back to being profitable; in 2006, Core Furnace Systems posted revenue in excess of $50 million,
Faccone says. Faccone spoke with Smart Business about the value of attitude in prospective employees, communicating results
with the work force and why problems aren’t like wine and cheese.
Balance your work force with your needs. Approximately 65 percent of our total head-count are permanent employees. The rest are
contract employees. We have resisted the
temptation of doing engineering in China or
India or some of these other places.
A couple of years ago, it seemed to be a
panacea. We feel like we can control our quality better this way. If I have a contract
employee working right next to my permanent employee, some of that ownership and
loyalty rubs off. So if there were to be a downturn, we still have flexibility without affecting
morale, without affecting a single employee.
In the past, when the market was good,
we would just go out and hire 50 people,
and when the market was bad, you would
just go and fire 50 people, so it was one of
those emotional roller coasters. I don’t
think that’s fair to the employees, and I
don’t think it’s fair to the company.
You’re losing knowledge, you’re losing
know-how. So we look for market trends, but
we resist the temptation to make wholesale
changes and say, ‘Now the market’s good, it’s
going to be good forever.’
We’ve been in it too long, and we know it’s
going to be cyclical and that there’s going to
be some adjustments down the road, but I
feel like these changes are going to be as
painless as possible to the company and its
employees.
Hire for attitude, train for skills. I personally
interview every single person that we hire in
the company, including clerical people. You
try to make sure that the people you have in
the organization fit the organization.
In a way, it’s like a big family. It doesn’t
mean that we always agree with each other,
but there’s a healthy relationship whereby
people can voice their opinion, they can
voice their dissent, they can discuss things
openly in a constructive and productive way,
and we resolve things. You can’t do that if you
don’t know the people in the organization, or
the people don’t know you or where you
come from or what you’re all about.
Let’s say you would come in as a mechanical engineer. The first interview would be
with the head of engineering. He needs to
satisfy himself that you have the technical skills. When people come to me, I assume
that the knowledge and the skills are all
taken care of. I don’t worry about that.
I’m assuming that even though you never
designed anything in your life, we can
teach you skills, and knowledge will come
in time. Your passion, your enthusiasm,
your work ethic, your integrity — either
you have those or you don’t.
Recognize the difference between management
and leadership. There’s a difference between
a good manager and a good leader. The CEO
is a job that encompasses both sides of it.
From a manager’s standpoint, it’s a matter of knowing the people you work with.
You have to know how they react and how
they behave. Not everybody’s going to be
driven by the same goals. You can’t just
assume that you can give someone a 5 percent raise and they’ll be happy. People are
driven by different things.
From a leadership standpoint, it’s more of
an outward thing. You have to look out at
what’s out there. Where’s the company going
to be five years from now, what kind of people do we have, are they going to be here five
years from now, 10 years from now?
If not, what are we doing to prepare for succession planning, what are we doing to prepare for different market conditions, what
skills sets do you need five years from now?
Stay close to your plan. I believe in stretch
goals, meaning if I think we can achieve X, our goal is X plus one. This is openly discussed with everybody. Business plans are
made based on these goals.
I’m very goal- and results-oriented. You
stay very close to the plan, and you learn
that in life, you don’t get what you expect,
you get what you inspect.
So you stay very close to it weekly,
monthly or quarterly and make sure you’re
achieving your goals, and if you’re not
achieving them, then you discuss why and
stay very close to it.
Challenge yourself and your people. I believe in
challenging people, and I believe in promises
made are promises kept. I don’t make promises that I can’t keep, and I hold people
accountable for the promises they make.
We don’t get paid for what we think we
can do, we get paid for what we can
achieve. We’ve been successful at it, so I
think it’s a good approach.
Share your results. In the past, I don’t think
any of our employees had any idea what the
performance of the company was. It was
managed, very, very closely, maybe at the top
level between the CEO and the CFO.
People were just asked or told what to do,
so there was really no self-initiative, no
involvement. Right now, basically everything
is shared throughout the organization.
We have a very flat structure, and all the
managers, our first and second line reports,
are about 30 percent of the company, so
when we have our weekly meetings, the
information gets disseminated throughout
the entire organization very quickly.
Be ready for criticism. Sometimes managers,
leaders, CEOs are afraid to make decisions
because they’re afraid of being criticized.
While nobody likes criticism, there are certain small problems if you don’t deal with
them, they’re not going away and they
might get larger.
And there might be some opportunities
that if you don’t deal with them, they may
fall by the wayside. Like a good friend told
me, problems aren’t like wine and cheese.
They don’t get better with age. HOW TO REACH:
Core Furnace Systems Corp.,
www.corefurnace.com