Reynolds C. Bish’s newest position began with a pretty overwhelming week.
For starters, he never imagined he’d be CEO of the company that became Kofax plc (LSE:KFX) — mainly because he founded and served as president and CEO of Captiva Software Corp., its largest competitor.
Bish sold Captiva in 2005 and then took a 16-month sabbatical. Around the time he was re-entering the job market, Kofax — still known as DICOM Group plc and based in Basingstoke, Hampshire, U.K. — was looking for a new leader.
In October 2007, after several meetings with the board, Bish agreed to join the provider of document-driven business process automation solutions. Still, he hadn’t met anyone else inside the company.
“The first thing I had to do on my first day of work, which was Saturday, Nov. 5, was introduce myself to the executive management team,” he says. “Then on the following Monday morning, which was Nov. 7, I had to introduce myself to all the employees on a large, companywide conference call we had arranged. In doing both of those things, I really had to try to (alleviate) a lot of potential anxiety or stress that people would have — not only because they had a new CEO but also because I had previously been CEO of their No. 1 competitor.”
To top it off, Bish knew serious changes were in store. Revenue wasn’t growing, market share was dwindling and more than 25 acquisitions had left the company in need of unification.
Bish’s challenge was to build trust with 1,161 employees to make the series of changes smoother for them.
“Certainly, there was a lot of speculation and fear, uncertainty and doubt about my motives and some of my decisions,” Bish says. “I had to focus on getting people to understand that, coming in, I was a rational businessperson and was going to exercise good, prudent judgment in all my decision-making.”
