Caretaker of the future
Building shareholder value is the goal of every enterprise. And it’s Wesley’s job to steer the operation along the proper path, without interfering with the daily operations of the brands, each of which has its own leadership team.
"Boards’ roles are oversight, and they should look to management to run the business," Wesley says. "We (Wesley and the brand leaders) need to be clear with our board as to what our strategies are, how we’re going to allocate capital, what performance expectations they should have, and they monitor that level of performance. We keep them apprised so we can make good business decisions. We try to educate them enough about our business so that they can be very supportive and provide counsel when we need it."
Wesley joined Fortune Brands in 1984 when the company brought Acco Furniture — of which he was president and COO at the time — into the fold. He became CEO of Fortune Brands office products division in 1990, then moved to the home and hardware unit, the company’s largest, in 1997. He served as president and COO of the board until December 1999, when he was named chairman and CEO of Fortune Brands.
Leading various divisions may have helped prepare him for the role he holds today, but Wesley says the leadership positions are quite different.
"Everything I do now is through people," he says. "It’s a different level. Everything I do on the business side is through the leaders of those businesses, whereas, when I was more involved with the business, I was doing a lot of stuff hands-on. My focus is more making sure we have the right folks in place internally with the right strategies, and externally, making sure we really articulate our story to the investment communities and rating agencies.
"I think I’m better prepared to do what I’m doing because I grew up running businesses. To sit down and talk about a business, you can better understand it if you’ve done many of the same things. You can add value by saying, ‘I’ve seen this before, I’ve seen that before, and here are two or three things to think about that maybe you haven’t thought about.’ So, it’s a very natural progression."
Wesley’s 20 years of experience with the company has given him insight into the challenges of running each of its brands.
"When I first got involved in leading the company back in 1999, we took a thoughtful look at each of the categories we’re in and looked to say, ‘Are we spending enough money in growth, to fund future growth? Are there things we can add to the category? If so, what would it cost to do that, and would we like what we had when we got there?’" he says.
"So, we’ve … laid out a series of things which we’d like to add that are very complementary to what we have today. We look at the growth, we look at the returns that we think we can get from it, and it’s really on those bases that we make decisions on where we’d like to add."