When the economy went south, Lynn Elsenhans got focused to ensure that her company and team members weren’t distracted by the surrounding maelstrom.
With more than 14,000 employees, a top-line brand name to protect and a publicly traded company to run, Elsenhans, chairman and CEO of Sunoco Inc., had a lot at stake.
“We had to get clear about a competitive cost structure so we could position ourselves well,” she says. “We invested more in our people for leadership development and addressed gaps in our leadership pipeline. We also invested in our brand to position us for the future in our industry, and then looked for ways to turn weaknesses into opportunities. It was a chance to look back and decide what’s really important.”
That’s the core of Elsenhans’ philosophy for how to manage through tough times: Do those actions that ensure the company stays strong and robust, but give employees hope and an idea of where the business is going.
“There are a lot of things in the industry that gave us concern,” she says. “As a leadership team, we asked ourselves, ‘What are our strengths? How do we turn threats into opportunities?’”
One opportunity was to transform Sunoco into a pull company instead of a push company, bringing consumers to it through its various divisions rather than pushing out its products to them. Explains Elsenhans, “We were looking to raise our brand as a pull point and then use our company to be in transportation and energy markets and meet the demands of those future markets.”
None of this was easy, and Elsenhans says it required increased communication and a lot of explanation about what was happening throughout the organization.