So I actually retired, now four times. People who come up through science or engineering, that kind of stuff, we tend to be introverts and we tend to think through problems a lot. And if I don't have something to think about that's actually technically challenging, I feel like I'm worthless. And so I, I felt a drive or a technical need to get back into doing something that I could solve Warren asked me to come back in the company in September of 21.
And it opened the door for us to really put the cultural changes that we've made in place. we could do the right things, that we could put the right processes and practices and policies in place that we could train appropriately. And that we could get results perhaps in a little slower fashion, but ultimately we would have more bottom line impact. And that's really what we're trying to do today, is to drive that culture through our organization.
Yeah maybe geeking out a little bit, but we've got Charlie Hodges, president and Chief Operating Officer of Hood Container Corporation joining us today and just a fascinating career and a tremendous icon of the industry. And just to hear his style and the way he leads and manages is extremely valuable. I think everyone will enjoy our time with Charlie.
Yeah. I think from my perspective, his leadership in the way he's crafted his persona over the last four decades as a leader in the industry is pretty impressive. Definitely an honor to sit down with him. And now, or word from our sponsors at Ox Box. They remain singularly focused on one area of the industry, and that is jumbo and heavy
duty boxes. Strength you can depend on. Visit them@www.oxbox.com. Let's get back to the show. If you wouldn't mind, why don't you tell us about your history a little bit.
When I came into the industry back in 1975, I was a chemical engineer and came in as a process engineer for Union Camp. They had a very lengthy training program and I came into a technical department. So it wasn't that you had to worry about production every day. You had the opportunity to actually think and learn come up through an organization that was, very much interested in how you progressed your training so that you could ultimately add to the bottom line of the that has gone away.
you can't do a very good job with it. Warehouser did a very good job with it. other companies. have A totally different approach. They seem to move people around an awful lot, which I think may do the same thing over time, but it certainly doesn't give you the basis that that I've enjoyed over the years that I've been in So it's from the very GetGo, I learned everything about paper machines, about pulp mills, about recovery boilers, about power plants. And environmental as well.
And I've used that throughout my years in, the jobs that I've ultimately done allowed to be a part of, like CEOs, senior VPs. and it's, at least from my standpoint, it's easier for me to lead a company when I understand more of the details about what's going on. Instead of having somebody give me their perspective of what's going so things like what A I C C is doing, what the B'S doing, what others are doing, what Tapi is doing is critical.
But I don't think we're getting the same impact, maybe because of the, the dynamics of the generations that are now coming on board. They're quite different. And what we're seeing is the things that, inspire them and make them wanna stay with a company are totally than what, I was looking 48 years ago,
It's interesting to me because we have a couple of guys, retiring. my fear is I'm watching all this tribal knowledge years and years in our business, in our industry ready to just go play golf or what have you. How do we keep that alive? They don't do the training programs like they used
No, they don't
spend six months in the union camp sales training program, and then you'd move around to plants. Does that worry you as you see this industry for the next 10 years going forward? That, that we're losing some of that?
I think without question it worries me. It worries a lot of us that we've been trying to do something to bring more talent into the organization. It's not a fancy industry, as you will know. making boxes. It's not rocket so you really have to figure out how to attract that next generation of millennials or Gen Zs or whoever it is. And that's one of the things that we're trying to do with our company today is figure out what is it.
It really allows us to attract those but also retain those individuals as we go forward.
I remember my first job in the industry, quoting by hand and I'm watching in today's technology, we're comfortable throwing the numbers into a computer so it spits out an answer. But back in the day, you're checking your own math and you're trying to make sure that the numbers work and as you're working through that process it's teaching you. The dynamics of margin at every return and cost centers and all these details.
And as we try to pivot, I don't know, kids, my kids' age want to experience the manual trials and tribulations of, at decimal point and now all of a sudden you're selling something at a loss and you've gotta call the customer and say, my pencil was a little too quick.
That, that's a big part of what we're trying to deal with. Of course we have amec through pretty much all of our facilities with few exceptions because obviously were built from 14 acquisitions over the last 10 or 11 years. So we have everything JB Edwards to Anec to CTI to Harry Rhodes. But I'll ask somebody, a detail about a costing algorithm or equation and it'll take a while for somebody to actually go in and figure out really what is going on.
So if, if I run more blow and go on a flexo I'm not having to cover my overhead cuz it's already been covered in the product that I'm currently running. What is the value then of running more flexo business on a 50 inch, which is sitting idle as opposed to not running that And it takes a long time to actually get an answer out of that
it's in the system. Charlie.
Punch it. in. punch it in.
Yeah, exactly.
that's great. What does the system say and how did it
how was it built and what's the formulas behind it? I think, definitely wanna dig into the acquisition strategy at some point in your philosophy on leadership. But you mentioned union camp, you have of degree in Chemical Engineering. Back then, where you looking to get into corrugated paper? Take us back to 18, 19 years old and what your vision was.
I had a high school chemistry that excited the heck out of us around chemistry. And so there was a group of us that got excited about chemistry and physics and science and math in general. And that laid the groundwork for me going to Georgia Tech a lot of the other guys that were in high school with me also went to Georgia I found out about four quarters in that you could make a heck of a lot more money as a you could as a chemist.
And if I was gonna be a chemist, I had to take two years of Russian or German, and I didn't wanna do that. And if you're going to be a successful chemist, you needed an advanced degree. Whereas you didn't need any of that if you were a So I quickly changed over to the reason I went into the paper industry was twofold. One, my dad actually worked for union He was a shipping clerk in a bag factory. And the other reason was I wanted to get back to Savannah. I really liked Savannah.
I grew up in Savannah and union camp had fed me for the first 18 or 19 years of my life, and then fed me for the next 17 years of my life after I went to work for and stayed with 'em the first time for 15 years, left and came back and stayed with 'em another two years after that.
What'd they have you doing when you first started?
I was a process engineer working in an environmental group. This was in the early part of the environmental movement, early part of the epa. Where the water rags and the air regs were just coming down the pike. So we did a lot of work around modeling the effluent system to understand what we could expect the bods to be coming out of the effluent system and how many air raiders order to reduce the b o d to the acceptable levels.
And so all that was to help drive the cost of energy down so you didn't have to run as many aerators to drive oxygen in water to make it okay. So into the Savannah River. But I went from there into the paper mill as a process engineer. And then shortly after that, I went into production. In the paper mill, we had seven most all of 'em making container board or bag paper. we had Three are full machines making standard bag and multi wall bag. We had two big liner machines.
We had a medium machine and we had saturated craft So I ran all seven of those machines. Didn't sleep for the five years that I ran those machines cuz it was a different era back there. It was not nearly the focus on total productive maintenance or preventive maintenance or predictive or process or troubleshooting. It was really considered an art. Interestingly enough when I came into the industry back in 1975 cuz it was called the art of paper making.
I think throughout my whole career I've been trying to move the needle away from it being a art to where it's really a science that we can really understand what's going on and can really get the most outta the assets that we've invested So that was my first 15 years was process engineering as a chemical engineer. But then running a large paper that provided a lot of liner board and Garg medium for the box plants that union camp had
When you look back a as, as a young man coming in and it sounds like moving at a pretty good pace through the business back in the seventies, what were you dealing with in terms of, line personnel? What was the management dynamics like?
Oh remember we weren't that far outta World War ii. No, it was very hierarchical. And the paper mill superintendents before me were like, gods, for lack of a better term. It was their paper mill. You better not go in there without getting their permission. The paper mill superintendent at least thought he had more authority than the general manager did of the paper mill.
And so I was just coming in as that was changing over to more It wasn't it was still hierarchical to a large degree, but the folks that had come outta World War II were now starting to move out or retire. And so it's kind of like the dynamic we're seeing today. You had to be a little more caring, culturally caring and supportive around which you were doing with your employees. And that was so the cusp of that technology was changing Some as well.
Remember, we're a very mature industry, so there's not a lot of things that have changed. The four engineers been around hundreds of years. But the control systems were starting to change and starting to change rapidly. We were starting to put sensors on the dry ends of the paper machine so we could measure basis weight. We could measure moisture, we could measure caliper we could measure color. We could see brakes that were coming down the machine.
And it was rather challenging to get the old paper makers to actually use those to controls because not only was there a sensor, but there were feedback loops to the wet end of the machine that would control base weight or would control moisture, or would control these other specs. Since they thought it was an art, they didn't really rely on those. So a big part of what I had to do in the technical department in the early days was trying to get folks to use those controls.
It's sort of like, on an automobile, you have, cruise control. The car's more efficient when you get it on cruise control, right? So you're driving down the interstate, you wanna put it on cruise control, you save gas by doing that. The same analogy for the paper machine. You wanted to put those on control so the paper machine would run more efficiently. So that was a real challenge to get those guys to to use that technology.
And then it morphed into moving away from analog controls on the paper machines into digital controls, on the paper and then ultimately into mill wide information systems that allowed us to optimize the whole mills as opposed to the individual assets, which is kinda where I see the packaging industry going and the need for doing more of that, especially on a corrugator.
Cause a corg gator is somewhat like a small paper So we really ought to be closed loop controlling or doing some type of advanced controls on the Corg Gators, which a lot of people are starting to do to really get the best return or the most return that we could get from those assets
When you were about the transition, from the art to the more scientific were you looking at your career at that point to advance into more leadership positions? Or what was your goal at the time when you were working your way through the mill? I
I never really thought about that very much. It
changed quite
unexpectedly A couple of times that I'd been promoted into a higher position. It was totally unexpected. The first one was when I became Paper mill I was just trying to do a good job in the technical department. then all of a sudden the mill manager called me in one Sunday when I was there for weekend duty and said, I want you to be payroll I had no clue or no idea that I was gonna be asked to do that. So that was a shocker.
And then the other time I was a vice president with GP and never thought I would move above vice president. I was surprised I ever made it to vice president with GP to begin with. And my boss, who was an executive vice president called up and said we want you to be a senior VP and run the Southern mills for Georgia Pacific. And again, flabbergasted that they would want me to do that.
What was your leadership style back then, and your, you say you have influences back then, more hierarchical, dictator, almost God-like as you describe. You're young and coming up, were you influenced by that or were you seeing the caring dynamic that you explained and crafted your leadership style that way?
that's a real good question. I was probably more influenced by that than in retrospect, I would've wanted to be. It's exciting today to work for a family like the hood family that I think share my thoughts about what culture should be in today's world. It's certainly more caring more sharing, more empowering, more trustworthy more evolving today than back then. But the circumstances were different.
I was working for Georgia Pacific, who was very quarterly focused as most, fortune 500 companies are. We didn't know it at the time, but Pete was getting ready to sell the company to the Koch brothers. So it was very important to drive EBITDA, to get the sales price up. So it was very much a pressure I probably aged 20 years in the, five years that I ran the CrossFit operation for gp.
I think over time I have mellowed to a culture that's much more clan based, family based, and a lot of that is due to the acquisitions that we've made over the last 11 Many of those were family oriented.
So as those companies came together a culture developed that was very much aligned with what the Hood family had and what I know Warren Hood wanted from a cultural standpoint because we had talked about it a number and so we had the opportunity to start thinking about a company that was not quarterly focused, but was much more longer term focused. That we could do the right things, that we could put the right processes and practices and policies in place that we could train appropriately.
And that we could get results perhaps in a little slower fashion, but ultimately we would have more bottom line impact. And that's really what we're trying to do today, is to drive that culture through our organization. We've spent a lot of
time
over the last couple years thinking about are we a hierarchal culture? Are we an ad hoc culture? Are we a clan base or a family-based culture? And we're some of all of those, you never get to be a hundred percent of any of those, right? And in working with some folks that I've had experience with over the years, we put together a. Where we were and where we wanted to be.
It wasn't all, wasn't big moves, but there were some moves across these four ax axis that actually defined these various cultures that I'm talking about. And so we built on that platform from about October of 21 when I came back into the organization. And have since put together guiding principles that drive that culture. We put together leadership characteristics which actually was the easy part.
Now you have to go back and you have to make sure that all your processes and policies are in tune with what you're trying to do from a cultural standpoint. And that's where the rubber really hits the road. And you've gotta make sure that the leadership group is actually promoting what you're trying to do from a guiding principle standpoint. Every minute of any interaction that they have with the folks in the company.
Cause it doesn't take very much Have somebody stand up and say that's not what your guiding principles say. So we're very attuned We're not there. We've got a long way to go, but at least we've started down that road.
You we're not gonna let you easily move from paper mill superintendent to, to hood Container today. So we're gonna go back to so you get promoted. You're running these seven paper machines as mill superintendent. You obviously move up again. You're was Union camp gets acquired and that's the transition?
Actually, I left before that. Okay. Yep. I left in 1990 to go to work for gp.
Okay.
And I went to work for GP in Monticello, Mississippi. We lived in Savannah, we lived on Dutch Island. I take my wife to Brookhaven, Mississippi drive her into a town and it's. It's the worst part of town to come
into.
And you can almost see the tears rolling down her face. You gonna move mo over here from Savannah? I said, yeah, but it's a great
opportunity.
It's a great opportunity. She says, I've heard that before. But anyway she's been a real trooper this last move was 16 times. It's kinda like a, I think they call 'em paper mill rats back in the early days. But yeah, so we moved to Brookhaven, Mississippi. I quickly went from technical director to engineering and maintenance manager to production manager to operations manager. Then I had the opportunity to go into a corporate job.
We did what was called a mill improvement process for all the mills within g p where I headed up a group of individuals that we actually developed a process with McKenzie. To go in and drive rapid improvement in the mills. I did that for two or three years. We then extended that to the box plants. We emitted it a little bit when we put it in the box plants. It was more of an area improvement process as opposed to a mill improvement process.
Cause you didn't need all the bells and whistles that we put in place from a mill standpoint. I then moved back to Mississippi, but this time to Burg, Mississippi. So I ran the Leaf River Pulping operation for GP down in New Augusta Mississippi, Shortly after that Pete Corll called me and asked me if I would go to CrossFit Arkansas. So I think you get the picture. These are not the garden spots of the South, right?
I always tell people they don't put box plants in Manhattan. We are in some, we are in some interesting towns. And
town. Yep. Yep.
look how fast again here you are in, in, in GP moving up very quickly. But I, I think what. The unspoken word, I guess is that chemical engineering background process guy, understanding automation, understanding, understanding the the, how the cake is made and then this improvement track, which is so key in, in process mapping and all that. You're obviously making significant improvement along the way. Is there someone that's watching you behind the scenes as you get promoted through this?
Or is this really just y you know, cuz it doesn't, it's not a really a natural progression.
No,
You're right. But it's an intriguing one.
That, that's a very good point because even in today's world, as I search for somebody to take my you find people that are, that have a lot of experience in the mills, or you find people that have a lot of experience in the box plants. seldom do you find somebody that has experience in both worlds that has had a foot in both worlds that could actually lead an organization that has pulp and paper operations, but has a large number of converting operations as well.
There were a couple of guys that were very significant in in helping me to progress. Now let's doing this with different companies. Ed Babin, who was a executive vice president for GP that Pete Corll had brought in the early nineties from inland. Ed was a great guy. we got along very well and he helped me along. He gave me a lot of insight into leadership. And I guess one of the more important things he said to me was, you've gotta trust your gut.
That for an engineer was out in the left field, right? You don't trust your gut. you get the data, and you make a decision.
yes, You loved chemistry.
Right?
there's a hypothesis and a proven theory or a disproven theory. That's it.
There you go. Yep. So he told me that two or three times and it finally sunk in, I think, of what he was talking about. So he was certainly one, George Warz George was, with, James River, Fort James. When we bought Fort James back in 99, 2000 he helped me an awful lot through the years. We remained friends. He actually ended up running a number of other companies. He ran Aon, he ran Wind Cup. So George and I remain good Pete Corll and I had an interesting relationship.
He was always pushing me harder and harder. In retrospect, I think he was doing that to help me improve. At the time it didn't seem that way, but certainly does. Now. I think those are three of the guys, if I go back, early on when I was in the technical department, there were a lot of folks there that helped us along. Tommy Tucker, Roger, Bart, Wells Nut, and it's interesting. I probably remember those guys better.
And the people I worked with in 1975 to 1979, which was the four years I spent at the tech department, I probably remember more about them and their families and them individually than I do any other people in the whole 48 years that I've been in the industry
It's interesting to me that it's, one thing that, that I hold very dear is there's two types of leaders. There are folks who take on a a young talent and their entire goal is the mentality of coach. And they'll teach 'em everything they possibly can that they know in, in the hopes that they'll they'll rise above.
The coach's level of talent, and there's the folks that want to keep one ingredient out of the secret recipe to, to control and make sure that they that they're always the source of knowledge. And I think that in all aspects of my career, and probably yours as well, that it, the coach side comes from the craziest and most unlikely characters in, in, in your career, but it's the things that you never forget, right?
And and I'm always fascinated by that and, how do we get more of the coach style in our business because they have a little more of a caring kind of mindset, and it's never easy. And then that I agree with you. The hardest struggle is. Leadership can have one common vision and culture and strategy and the ability to push that down as the organization becomes more complex is so incredibly challenging.
Yeah. But you, the celebration is when somebody at line level says something that that one of your leaders have said and you it's been a good
yeah, Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.
you get up to senior vp you say it's kinda like the rat race. You're running on, you're moving you're moving up in the organization. At that point, were you getting burnout with all that? What was your career like at that time? What was your perspective? Did you have visions of running your own company at this point, or were you just in the nitty gritty of it all and
I was in the nitty gritty of it all. At that time, by the time I was become senior vp, there was comments being made about, who the next CEO was going to be, or Chief Operating Officer. I probably thought about that as a natural progression. But it was about that time that the Koch Brothers Sport gp, which was the end of 2005 that was huge because I was far enough up in the organization that I had golden parachutes and stock options and all those vested as a result of the acquisition.
So I actually thought I was gonna retire. That lasted for about two weeks. this George Works guy I was talking about, who also left GP had. Had gone out and was actually consulting for one of the major bag manufacturers in the United States, a company called DU Back. And he asked me to come in and help from a process standpoint with that, which ultimately led to me in a very roundabout way to me, getting on the board of the West Coast Bump and paper company called Port Townsend Paper Company.
And then the private equity firm that actually owned the paper for the West coast asked me to be the CEO out there. So that's when I left the south and went to Port Townson, Washington, Vancouver, bc we had mill, a mill in upstate Washington right on the Puget Sound. And we had converting in Canada, in Richmond DC in Colonna in Calgary and in Vancouver. And so I went out and did that for four or five years.
And my kids were getting married in the south and they were starting to have grandchildren. So again, my wife said, you can stay up here as long as you want. I'm moving back south. That's about what she said, but not quite so many words. But so I left that again expecting to retire. And about the time I left that Warren Hood comes calling he said I wanna buy a pulp and paper mill, but I really don't know anything about pulp and paper. Can you come help me with the diligence on the mill?
So this was when IP was having to divest three paper mills as a result of their acquisition of Temple and Inland back in early 2012. So I did that. Again, never expecting anything to come of that cuz I really didn't expect that we would be able to get that mill. And I say we, all I was doing was the diligence. It was really Warren and the hood family that was doing everything else and son of a gun. If we didn't get the mill.
You're like, oh, see that coming?
I was shocked. I said, yeah, it was like, one of those promotions. I was totally shocked that we actually got that mill because all the big guys were in there, bidding on it. So we ended up with the new Johnsonville, Tennessee Mill, and I knew Indy ended up with the two mills out on the west coast. So then Warren needed somebody to run the so he asked me to stay on, run the mills.
And then it became obvious very quickly that a standalone media mill was not the best position to be in from a return And that's when we figured out that we really needed to add converting operations. And so in end of 2013, 2014 we bought Strong Haven, which was four facilities in the South. Shortly after that, we bought a facility in Tampa, Florida. Then the mill in Baton Rouge or St. Francisville became available. And a lot of this
that was IP as well, right? St. Francisville?
no, it was actually held by a private equity firm called Kpac.
Okay.
Yeah. It was originally a Crowns seller back mill, and then Crowns z it was making magazine paper. So when magazine paper for Time Life sports Illustrated started to go away, they lost their markets. They stayed around for a while with coffee filters. So they made all the coffee filters for Mr. Coffees. Then all of a sudden the pods came around and that went by the wayside. So then trying to remember the name. Kind went through two or three different holdings.
I think it was Tim Beck came in and decided to convert it to Container Board, and that was really one of the first mills, first Virgin Mills that had been converted to container they put a lot of money into figuring out what it would take to convert it and started to conversion, and then they went bankrupt. And so Kpac actually was one of the investors. They were able to buy the bonds of, Significantly less than face value. And we started looking at that mill as other people were looking at it.
And Warren did a very good job of developing relationships with a number of people in the industry. He had a previous working relationship with John Dillon. And the same thing went for Kpac. Warren Developed a working relationship. With Mike Kama, who is the principal that allowed him to get that meal. So we had good liner board meal, we had a good medium meal. Still didn't have much converting. That's when we started buying converting operations.
And this is where I learned a lot from him, or at least solidified some of my thoughts about the right way to run companies. He tries to hire the very best people he can find to run the companies and he ain't lets 'em run it. So that's my philosophy as well. I don't know, I know a pretty good bit about paper mills. I don't know a lot about converting.
You guys could run circles around me from a converting standpoint, but, go out and hire the people that know how to sell and operate and cut 'em loose and be a servant leader. Give them the resources they need, knock the any walls down so that they can be successful and let them run with it. And that's what I try to do.
Great perspective, Steve Jobs said, I don't hire people to tell them what to do. I hire people for them to tell me exactly what we can do better. Yep. And it's a great perspective.
Yep.
There, there was a gentleman that spoke at A I C C in Las Vegas in 1999. His name was Don Beveridge. And he came up through the IBM sales system. And his thing that has resonated all this time is don't come in my office and ask me what to do. Come in my office and I'm a huge fan of our job is to get obstacles out of the way. That's it. where can I help you be successful? And I love that philosophy that you bring to the business. How many direct reports do you have right now in, in your business
I have seven. Yep. One is actually a new acquisition that we made back in August of last year, and he just reports to me so that we can keep things consistent, at least for a year before we try to, before we go in and try to change too but really I have a senior VP of the mill division. I have a VP for operations and a VP for sales for the industrial corrugated division.
And then we have a display in graphics group division, which is also has a VP of operation and then I have finance, I have hr and I have one gentleman that is my, VP of analytics
That's great.
When you got, when you started doing the diligence with Hood, so you mentioned there were two times that you considered retirement, and you mentioned that you did pretty well for your time with gp. What brought you back? Like, why didn't want to retire? What, was there a drive inside of you that just kept bringing it back or like why? Clearly didn't need the job,
there's a, there's there was a couple reasons for it. So I actually retired, now four times. I think the first couple of times.
it's glutton for punishment. This just keep coming back.
It was real. People who are come up through science or engineering, that kind of stuff, we tend to be introverts and we tend to think through problems a lot. And if I don't have something to think about that's actually technically challenging, I feel like I'm worthless. So just sit around, not doing anything that's actually improving my mind or improving a bottom line is critical to my psyche to feel important. Now that's probably pretty sad actually, but it's true.
And so I, I felt a drive or a technical need to get back into doing something that I could solve probably.
I think we all need, we all have an internal drive. I think that's what motivates us to get out of bed every morning. So it's, I don't think there's anything sad about it at all. It's what it's what you're made of. That's it. Yeah. That's just, it keeps you young.
Yep. The other reason though was I selected my replacement back in 2019. And I left in March of 2020, which I think was an ideal time to leave because the pandemic started the week I left and I came back after the gentleman that took my spot, didn't work out. Warren asked me to come back in the company in September of 21. So all that was left was Delta and Omicron. And that was pretty much by the wayside, right?
So I didn't have to deal with all the rigamarole that went on from a pandemic standpoint, which was really nice. Cuz I don't like to deal in the details anyhow. I like to be up here. But Warren asked me to come back that second time, I don't really have a good case for what total retirement's going to look like because it was so different in that year and a half because you couldn't go anywhere. You had to stay in the house. You were scared to get groceries at the grocery store.
And we had planned to do a lot of traveling and had a number of trips that we canceled because you just couldn't do 'em. But I was very excited about being able to come back into the organization and some things had changed in the organization that allowed me to feel more comfortable coming back in. And even though the guy that replaced me didn't work out, he really set the stage for the cultural work that we were, that we're doing now He had a different approach.
from where we wanted to be from a cultural And so it opened the door for us to really put the cultural changes that we've made in place.
I imagine when you came back it was almost hearing all that, it was almost a relief to a lot of people. And it was probably really refreshing for you as a professional to see how welcome you were to come back,
Absolutely. And it still is. I, and I really appreciate that about the folks.
Now I'll flip that too. And now I think you bear the burden cuz you've alluded to this your replacement. Can someone be successful? there's stylistic, there's idealistic in terms of how you run the business and how you manage your folks. that's a big, that's a big responsibility to pass. How do you set the next person up?
I think a big part of that is a recognition that the. Culture that the individual embraces is so critically important to their success going forward and his success of the company. And so what we've included in our searches this time which we're now involved in actually is quite a bit of time with industrial psychologists who has worked with us on putting together the cultural aspects of what we're trying to do.
So she really understands where we're heading for a cultural, from a cultural standpoint, and she's able to pry, for lack of a better term, into the individual psyche that she's talking to, to understand whether or not he or she would be a fit for what we're trying to do from a culture and a guiding principle So that's the biggest change we've made.
I think the other change is that we're doing a better job from a reference checking standpoint and trying to not only check references from a position background or job background, but we're also talking from a social standpoint. Give me some social references as well for people that you don't necessarily work with but you go to church with or you're in organizations with or whatever.
And so those are the two big items that we've changed, they're spending Many hours with the industrial psychologist now is a big part of making sure that we get the right person
That's great. That's fascinating. Yeah, just higher, slow fire, fast not that we're trying to fire, usually you wait too long with someone that's not the right fit or doesn't seem to show success in the objective metrics and things like
That's a good point because when we started thinking about culture we talked a lot about clan and family, but on the other hand we knew we had to get results. So there was a result orientation, and the consultants kept saying, you can't do that. You can't be clan focused and result focused at the same time.
And I think we thought through that enough to come to the realization that if a person is not performing in whatever environment we've generated as a company, it's the right thing from a company standpoint, but it's also the right thing from the individual standpoint to let them know that through appropriate counseling and performance improvement plans.
But if they just can't make it in that culture or that environment, then it's the right thing to do for them too, to let them go and do something else where they can be an appropriate part of an organization. And though that's how we reconcile the idea of a Klan culture with a results focused operation as well. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that clan culture dynamic as you said, 14 acquisitions I've. Spent time in that space. And I believe firmly that if there's not assimilated cultures between buyer and seller it's doomed to fail. You can have the best strategy in the world. And you've talked a little bit about that. How do you how do you drive intermingling or meshing of slightly different but assimilated cultures in an acquired business without changing the character of that facility or group of facilities?
Yeah, that's that's a good question. I'm not sure that we do that or do it very well. Actually. The first thing I do is I try not to change anything for a year. Let's understand, what they do. That's good. Let's understand what we do that's good. That we might be able to bring to the table. And some things have to change, the 401K systems legally have to change the payroll systems will change those types of things.
But in terms of running the operation and the people within the operations we don't change those for about a year. And then over that year that lead individual who really will set the stage for the culture within that organization will start to get to spend some time with the other leadership group. And hopefully we'll start to embrace the culture and the guiding principles. But, so many of the companies that we bought had very similar cultures cuz they were coming from, privately held folks.
Probably, I don't know, 50 or 60%, came from people like Gary West the Isans in Chicago Pete Handicap and Bob Handicap. Those guys that was probably, Seven or eight of the facilities or more that we have today. And all those folks had the same type of plan or family culture.
And so they not only fit into what we were trying to do, but they also formed the basis of what we were trying to from a cultural But, it goes beyond culture because you have, like we talked earlier, you have all the legacy systems that you've gotta deal with. You have all these different assets. So we probably have one of everything, of every brand of converting equipment as you can imagine. Even Thompson dye cutters, we still have those.
Yeah. So bringing all that together into a homogeneous single company is a big is a big opportunity that we're currently trying to
on. It's funny that you said that. I was literally my next question to you was now as a process guy, the back end of the house, that was my next question. Do you try to deploy a team to just say, Hey, we've got it. There is a dynamic there.
There's messaging in that culture hands off and you guys are doing to the leader, more of a, Hey, come and take a look and see that, that there's a lot of similarities, maybe some nomenclature differences but you work on that culture piece and then it's that slow, frog in the water as the pot begins to simmer back of the house systems and processes. You rely on the leader, you, so you get them assimilated to the hood way of doing business. And then you start to ask them to lead that charge?
Or do you send a team in
we've done it depending on which of the systems and processes that we're after, we've done it in a couple different ways. The most prominent way though, is something we call the Hood Performance so we wanted to make sure that we were empowering our employees, that we're getting information from our employees and that we were giving them information so that they could run their operations.
So we began with communication modules so that there, there are shift exchange meetings, their routine meetings with with operators and supervisors. There, routine meetings with plant managers who are reporting how the plant's doing back to the back, to the operators and we have followed that up with improved maintenance. Through computerized maintenance management systems. So we now have one computer system that we're spreading throughout the whole organization.
But in order to make that successful, we then had to go back and we had to go through a common nomenclature for all our equipment so that when we're looking for spare parts from one facility to the other, we can actually figure out that this part, this spare part works for this piece of converting equipment. That's a huge part of what we're doing. We're doing the same thing from a quality standpoint. So all that rolls into what we call the Hood Performance System.
And we've identified focus facilities within our organization that really need help in bringing them up to speed. But it's not only the processes we're putting a good bit of capital into our facilities as well because we bought these legacy plants and they were really not well capitalized, and people who knew they were going to sell wasn't necessarily putting a lot of money back into the facilities.
And so we're just starting after many years of starting to get some of 'em to the point where they're, we could compete against the blow and go business. We don't want to compete against the blow and go business because the margins are so low, but we certainly could now with some of the equipment that we're starting to put into our plants. So what we have that in place. The other thing was data accuracy.
And so we had to put a group of individuals together to make sure that the information we were getting out of Anec was accurate, so that when we did costing or whatever we did, that we were getting good information to make decisions on. So that was a big part of of driving the consistency that we're trying to drive across the organization. So we did it with culture. We're doing it with the Hood Performance System.
We're also doing it with a lot of the what we call Councils where we take customer service managers from all the facilities into Synergy teams, they meet and figure out what are the things that we need to be working on. And then they will put policies and procedures and training in place in order to drive the integrity of the data that we're getting out of those systems. I have I have one person, this VP of analytics and continuous improvement a guy named Bernardo Lawrence, bt.
And BT knows everybody in the industry is amazing to me. Every time I ask. You guys might even know him for that matter. But he does a fantastic job of interfacing with the, converting equipment suppliers, but also he's run box plants, he's run regions of box plants. So he's a perfect fit for what we're trying to do
phenomenal.
In 2022, you were inducted in the ICP F Circle of Distinguished Leader. The contributions to the industry in further developing the industry, mentoring your leadership. Was that another surprise in your career,
Very much.
Clearly that had to really mean a lot, that I imagine so that 40 years of hard work is recognized. Explain that moment when you got that call or when you found out.
I actually found out, cause my wife had left her computer open in the kitchen and there was a email from my executive assistant and Colin never writes Kathy. So that perked my interest. So I actually read the email and it was about the award. So I actually knew Mike before, but it was because I was sneaky. It was absolutely a total shock, but I was very excited about it.
I think back over the years that I've been in the industry, and I guess the parts that have been the most pleasing to me have been when, as you were talking about earlier, where you could coach or you could mentor young engineers or young professionals who are coming up in the organization and then see them advance into some of the guys that work for me in crossover are now senior VPs with Georgia Pacific, and I still stay in touch with 'em.
And I know about their families it was just, It was an unbelievable moment
Yeah, I can see the, just a smile on your face when you talk about, you probably running through some people that progress their career through your coaching and you look at the NFL or coaches, they have a coaching tree and they judges are successful ultimately on wins and losses, but also who they elevate and they clearly in your career that that's you've spent a lot of time doing.
Yep.
Charlie what would you say to young talent today? The the key message as they start their careers maybe not in the paper or box business but what would you try to share?
Always be learning throughout your entire career. You never get to the point where you can't continue to learn. Don't be afraid to ask questions. I think so many times, maybe not the millennials today, but when I was coming along, in a hierarchal environment, you didn't ask a lot of questions. A lot of it you had to go find for yourself.
I see with my sons in the today's world they have so many contacts where they'll run things by other folks where a lot of mine was done, just learning it for myself. Instead of taking advantage of of the knowledge that was already out there. Maybe, maybe other people wouldn't have shared it at the time, but certainly I think that's an opportunity today.
And incidentally, that sort of brings up the whole concept of hybrid work, and one of the issues that I have with it is that lack of mentoring when individuals aren't in the office. They're not being supervised and they don't have mentors, they don't have coaches. And they don't have that one-to-one contact. And ultimately I think that's gonna have an impact on the productivity of the organizations that go to a purely remote workforce.
I'm not sure, being in the office a hundred percent of the time's, right. and we pretty much adopted a hybrid approach. But we don't have a lot of young engineers or young professionals coming in our organizations where I really see that there needs to be more one-on-one contact than would perhaps be available if you were doing it in a totally remote environment.
great.
If you were to say something to your 21 year old self coming out of Georgia Tech, if you look back on your career, are there things that you wish you would've done differently or regrets
there was one. It wasn't when I was 21, it was when I was working for gp. I had left the mill and went to work for Doug. Tom, I don't know if anybody remembers. Doug. Tom. Doug. Tom was the VP of converting for gp. And I ran the box plant, the manufacturing portion of the box plants for Doug.
And then I went and did this mill improvement process I got a job opening for I forget what he called it, director of sales or operations or something for the southern region, which was probably 10 or 12 box plants where you actually ran, sales, you had general managers, but you ran that. And I said, Doug, I wanna stay in the mills because I can be a VP if I'm in the mills a lot quicker than I can if I'm in the box plant. I had that same opportunity today.
Hi. Probably more than 50 50 chance I would've jumped over to the box plant side of the house. Because quite honestly, I think the box plant guys made a lot more money than I did staying in the mills.
I have a feeling if you would've made more money and had a chance to retire, you would've just stayed retired more weeks and got back in. So
See, that's why I told you it's, it is a sad story when all you wanna do
work. That was wonderful.
It's wonderful. We thank you so much for this, this has been outstanding. Uh, I thank you guys.