Karen Carnahan’s responsibilities are really quite clear.
They all point to one conclusion: move Cintas Corp. from the No. 2 document management company in the country to the top position.
Carnahan was handed the responsibility along with her position of president and chief operating officer of the Document Management Division in 2008. With the charge came the objective of leading her 1,800 employee-partners under one vision to accomplish the feat.
“The most important key to being a good leader is building a team, a very effective, energized team of people who understand the vision,” she says. “A leader has to be able to inspire people to achieve that vision. But I think it comes down to … how do you set that vision to begin with?
“The key to setting that vision in the first place is getting the buy-in of your team of people understanding that it is an achievable vision. You will come out of the huddle, so to speak, understanding that that’s the vision that everybody agreed to, that it is achievable and that you’re all rowing in the same direction in order to achieve it.”
Carnahan, the first female division president at the $3.8 billion business services company, has followed that method in order to stay on track to reach No. 1 and achieve some of the division’s main goals, such as maintaining annual, double-digit revenue growth and venturing into new markets.
In fiscal 2009, the Document Management Division reached revenue of $213 million. The division recently expanded past the U.S. and Canada, opening two operations in Europe. And in June, Cintas was the first company in document destruction to become North American AAA certified by the National Association of Information Destruction.
Carnahan credits her success to watching and learning the importance of vision from a great leader, Cintas founder Richard “Dick” Farmer.
“Dick had the ability to paint a vision that was exciting and achievable,” she says. “Along the way, he provided the leadership, yet wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and get down with us in the trenches to make sure that vision was achieved.”
Here is how Carnahan develops and communicates the vision for Cintas’ fastest-growing business division.
