Self-assessment
Monson’s initial fears about taking over a family-owned organization proved un-founded. Owners Feysan and Alex Lodde gave
him a free hand to run the company, leaving Monson to face the
problem of how to grow MV Transportation.
The choices were to do it by acquisitions or do it organically.
Monson had previously seen a company he worked for pay about
$100 million to acquire a business generating about the same in
annual revenue. Three years later, it brought in only about $60 million.
He’d also seen companies eliminate key people after acquisitions, which inevitably eliminated customers that respected and
had bonded with those people. Because of these experiences, he
knew he would grow the company the hard way — organically —
and he had to do it in a way to ensure success.
“The most important thing to do is grow in a way that you don’t
risk the company by having too many assets or too many long-term commitments, like real estate, so that if your business starts
to decline or your revenue starts to decline, you quickly become a
company with a big loss,” he says.
He decided MV would target contracts that were less asset-intensive so it could achieve growth without adding debt. To get those
contracts, though, Monson first needed the right people on his
team. So he started by assessing everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.
“You have to spend time with them,” he says. “You have to look
at their work product and see how they interact with their teams,
and you have to look at what their priorities and values are.”
He spent much of his first 30 days reviewing the balance sheet
with an outside auditor, which revealed that the debt-equity ratio
was about 17-to-1 and the balance sheet was sometimes used to
pump up earnings. Because of that, he didn’t trust the chief financial officer, so he let him go.
“I made that decision very quickly because having solid information is extremely important, especially when the company was as
leveraged as this one,” Monson says.
Within the first six months he also replaced the chief operating
officer and the executive in charge of business development.
“Those are some of the key people that can fuel growth, and in
all three positions, I brought in people I had known for many years
and trusted,” Monson says.
Doing so ensured that he didn’t have to worry about getting buyin for his strategy because the new people already had the same
ideas as Monson, and they were able to move forward together.