A couple of years ago, Sam Simon was trying to close a deal with
a major fuel supplier. A number of Simon’s employees had put
many, many hours into the deal — strategizing, negotiating and
crunching the numbers.
But no matter how the numbers looked, the deal just didn’t make
sense for the other company. So Atlas Oil Co. — the fuel distributor, which Simon founded and leads as the chairman and CEO —
lost out.
After watching months’ worth of work go up in smoke, the Atlas
employees who worked on the deal were understandably disappointed and the company’s overall morale took a short-term hit.
But the one person who didn’t sulk was Simon. He knew that if
Atlas — which earned $1 billion in revenue in 2007 — was going
to pick itself up and dust itself off, the employees needed to
emerge from the doldrums of defeat, as well.
That’s why following the bitter defeat, Simon still took his team
out for a victory dinner.
“They worked hard, they worked a lot of hours, we spent a lot of
money on that deal and did everything possible,” he says. “I took
them out, we had some great wines, and we actually celebrated. I
told them that we did everything possible and that these things will
come back to us.”
Simon believes that no company will succeed over the long haul
without a positive culture rooted in teaching and teamwork. That’s
the type of work environment he has built since the inception of
Atlas in 1985.
Building and maintaining that type of culture takes hard work and
relentless communication, but above all, it takes a strong foundation
of core values and the ability to look down the road.
“That’s what I always tell our people, that we need to continue to
focus on our long-term strategy and core values,” Simon says. “If we
do that, we’ll be in a better position than a lot of companies out
there.”
