When the calendar
turned from 2001 to
2002, Vince Anido faced a monumental task. On
New Year’s Eve, he had taken
over leadership of ISTA
Pharmaceuticals Inc., inheriting the leadership of a company that had only nine months
of operating cash left. Anido
considered everything from
putting the company up for
sale to shuttering it, but he
never lost faith that the company would make it through.
“You as the leader have to
maintain a pretty positive outlook that somehow or other
you’re going to work your way
through it,” Anido says. “It
may not be what you thought
initially; it may not be the most
attractive option for the CEO
or perhaps for the entire management team, but there are
ways to solve the problems.”
Ultimately, the ophthalmic
pharmaceutical company
found another company that
was in worse shape than it
was. With just enough cash
left to buy it, the purchase
gave ISTA the ability to help
turn things around.
Four years later, ISTA recorded 2006 revenue of $33 million
with 240 employees.
Smart Business spoke with
Anido about how tough times
can bring your team together
and about the benefits of making quick decisions.
Q. What role does the leader
play in a fast-growth company?
I spend most of my days
walking around as opposed to
being in meetings. Because of
the way we identify people
and put them in charge, when
I walk into somebody’s cubicle or office, I have a pretty good
idea already of who they are
and what they do.
Just by watching them work
and getting the feedback and
moving around, that helps me
stay on top of a huge number
of things without feeling like I
have to control any one thing.
By doing that, I see who
does well under stress and
who looks like they can handle more. We talk about projects at least once a quarter or
so. We’re not talking about too
many layers here. My VPs are
able to give me hallway
updates on how certain
people are doing. It’s
typically the VPs who
select the folks who are
moving up the leadership ranks. We try to
give them special projects, and that gives them
more visibility.
Q. How do you balance
external and internal
responsibilities?
When I make a mistake here, it’s because I
spend more time out in
the field than anything
else. I tend not to get
diverted into traditional
CEO political positions
where I join this board or I’m
involved in this industrywide
committee.
It allows me to spend more
time getting close to our customers, seeing how they are
using our products and getting
ideas from them about what
products we should be bringing in.
I don’t have to rely on my
guys to just feed up to me
what’s going on because by
the time it gets to me, I have a
pretty good idea of what is
happening.
Q. How can facing obstacles
help a company’s growth?
The initial phase of the company was basically a melt-down. When we first came in
and took the company over, it
was getting ready to go under.
We had to drag it out just before we went into bankruptcy
and find new products and
financing.
We’ve gone through so many
stressful situations that were
truly make or break for the
company that it negated the need to ever do any team-building here. We were using
live examples just to keep the
place going. That built up an
incredible amount of trust.
No one is playing games at
that point. The focus of the
organization is pretty straightforward — survival — and the
sense of urgency is there.
Every company always has a
series of projects that have a
greater chance of failing than
succeeding. You can always
use some of those as a way of
highlighting a new set of
expectations.
Pulling people out of their
day-to-day responsibilities to
go run some of those quickly
signals to the organization
how critical that becomes. By
pulling some of your best and
brightest, you show how
important it is for that particular project to succeed. So
you can use a live situation to
then begin changing the
atmosphere.
Q. How can making quick
decisions help a company
succeed?
There are always people that
feel, ‘I have to have all the data.’
The fact is that having all the
data isn’t going to help you
make a much better decision.
It’s more important to make
sure that you have the right
data quickly.
By hiring people that are fairly
senior, many of whom have
had jobs that are much larger
in bigger organizations than
we have here, they can think
their way down to the finite
details without having to listen
to a presentation.
As a result, their need for
information isn’t as great.
HOW TO REACH: ISTA Pharmaceuticals Inc., (949) 788-6000 or istavision.com