It was 1964. Drayton McLane Jr. was a young executive working
in the grocery distribution business of his father, Drayton McLane
Sr., and still years away from the worldwide business mogul and
Major League Baseball franchise owner he would become.
What was then known as the McLane Co. Inc. was still a small
family operation based in Cameron, Texas.
But McLane saw the potential of his father’s company, if his
father and the company were only willing to take a risk.
“We were in an old distribution center that had been built by my
father, who had been in the business since 1922,” McLane says.
“We needed to build a new, modern distribution center, and to do
it, I felt we needed to move to another city about 40 miles away.”
The company had no debt, and McLane needed to convince his
father to assume a large amount of debt in addition to uprooting
his business from Cameron to move to the larger city of Temple,
Texas.
McLane told his father that the company could never reach its
full potential where it was and that any short-term adversity would
be worth it to position the grocery distribution business for
increased growth down the road.
“We were the largest employer in town, with about 100 employees, and it was going to be hard on them when we moved as well
as for my father and mother, who had lived there all their lives,” he
says. “That’s on top of going into debt pretty heavy to build this
facility. But that’s what we did, and in 1966, we opened our new
distribution facility in Temple, and that’s what really opened the
doors for our business to grow.”
McLane, who now chairs the McLane Group — a private holding
company that does not disclose revenue — says a tolerance for
risk is one of the toughest traits to build in a businessperson, especially when you’ve achieved success and feel like you’re on the
right track. But, he says, the greatest business leaders always see
the potential in their companies and have an eye toward what
might be in the future. You’ll never achieve your full potential in
business without taking risks and cultivating a work force that is
willing to follow your example.
It’s what has helped take McLane from small-town grocery distribution executive to the highly public helm of the Houston
Astros, where as chairman and CEO, he has overseen the most
successful era in franchise history.
What follows are some of the lessons he has learned about leadership in his decades-long business career.
