Cover Story
All in
How Angel Alvarez built ABB/CON-CISE North America by building a team that doesn’t fear mistakes
By Mark Scott
Smart Business Broward/Palm Beach | March 2008
Angel Alvarez had cashed out his 401(k) and maxed out his
credit cards. At the same time, his wife was pregnant with the
couple’s third child. It was late 1989 and the company then
known as ABB, which Alvarez had just founded, was having a
hard time getting started.
“Many a time, I walked into the office and people were saying,
‘We’re short. We can’t make payroll. We can’t do this. We can’t do
that,’” Alvarez says. “It was a test of leadership.”
Alvarez, the founder and CEO of the company now known as
ABB/CON-CISE North America, saw an opportunity to be a
strong regional player in the distribution of optical products.
But as the business struggled early on to generate enough revenue to stay afloat, Alvarez needed to convince his employees
that the blood, sweat and tears they were all shedding would
eventually pay off.
“They have to believe in you, otherwise they will frag you,”
Alvarez says. “If you don’t have the backing of the rest of the army,
your troops will shoot you in the back by putting you in harm’s
way.”
In hopes of avoiding this fate, Alvarez focused on building each
part of his company in a very deliberate manner. As new leaders
were brought aboard, Alvarez continually reassessed what needs
had to be addressed with the next piece of the puzzle.
“A big mistake people make is hiring people like themselves,”
Alvarez says. “Then you have all this core competency in an organization with a lot of weakness because the hiring process was hiring very similar people.
“Be honest with yourself and understand what your strengths are
and hire to your weaknesses. When we’re together, we redefine
what the weaknesses are and where we need to better define.
When we bring individuals in, we do personality profiling to make
sure their natural adaptive behaviors are in line with what our
needs are to balance our scorecard a bit.”
This philosophy of thoughtfully approaching each step in the
growth process is embedded in every part of the organization and
has helped Alvarez successfully grow the company.
Here is how he did it.
Get who and what you need
Alvarez came from a sales background, and he knew that he had
what it took to turn his company into a big player in the wholesale
market for optical products. However, he needed a solid plan and
good people.
As a leader, you can’t be afraid to look at examples outside of
your industry of how businesses have succeeded.
“Business is a science,” Alvarez says. “There’s a lot of really good
research already done and models that you can follow. It’s not
much different from building a building. The engineering to build
a skyscraper is a science. That core fundamental basic value that
you can study and lift from another industry and put into our
industry is really how we’ve forged our vision and our plan.”
Alvarez uses a similar philosophy when it comes to hiring people:
Determine your strengths and hire for your weaknesses. Then hire
people that have been through some of the challenges you anticipate
facing.
“You don’t have to sell those people on it they’ve done it,”
Alvarez says. “Our COO came from a business, which was his family business. He lived through that evolution. He said, ‘Wow, this is
the same thing that I was going through eight years ago or 10 years
ago.’ That experience gives him confidence and allows for a very
clear understanding, and he can build all those bridges that we
need to do.”
Finding these people requires that you engage in communication
and develop relationships. When you do find someone that fits your
company, don’t be afraid to spend what it takes, within reason, to get
him or her.
“They say there is a lack of good people out there,” Alvarez says.
“There are plenty of good people out there. What I see is a lot of
people not wanting to pay the dollars necessary to bring in the
right people. The right person in the right environment, if you’re
set up to grow and you’re clear in your mind that you have opportunities to grow, will pay for themselves in a hurry.”
Talk to your employees
As steps are taken at the upper levels to move your company forward, you must share that information with your employees. While
it is a cliché, it is very often true that actions do, in fact, speak louder than words
“The majority of people have to see it happening,” Alvarez says.
“It’s not my job to convince all of them. My job is to make the
organization stretch, and they’ll start believing as it happens.”
Alvarez recalled the company’s recent move into a larger
warehouse.
“You can see the capacity, and you can feel the capacity,” Alvarez
says. “They can see it and touch it and smell it. They live through
all these things that we’re trying to do, and they understand that
we’re improving all the time and making changes all the time.
What they need to be convinced of is why we’re doing all this.
“We define leadership as being able to put that vision out there
and stay true to it over a long period of time and be successful. ...
You just get traction and attention, and the naysayers become
believers. People say, ‘Wow, you’re doing what you said you were
going to do.’”
Alvarez holds regular town-hall meetings every six months to
update employees on the company’s progress and its setbacks.
“Obviously, there are mistakes,” Alvarez says. “We’re not going to
be held back by any of those errors or mistakes that we’ve made.
It might have delayed us 30 days or 90 days, but we’re pushing forward on the plan.”
And while action is the bottom line, constant communication can
only help keep employees in the loop with new developments or
changes in company operations.
“It’s like Ronald Reagan used to say,” Alvarez says. “Tell them
what you’re going to do, tell them again how you’re going to do it,
and then tell them again. It’s just a constant rehash.”
You also need to take time to celebrate when goals are accomplished or when an employee steps out and does something that
really benefits the company.
“There are a lot of things that go on in business that companies
accomplish, and they just don’t ever reflect on what that meant to
somebody,” Alvarez says. “They take the profit because they did
something. They don’t give credence to all these and the fact that
it took a lot of people’s time and hard work to get it there.”
Focus on the big picture
It may sound like a strange position to take, but Alvarez says he
takes great care in ensuring that both he and his managers focus
at least as much of their daily effort on the business as they do in
the business.
“If you’re not a good enough manager that allows for delegation
and training and getting your leads and getting your supervisors up
to speed in order for you to spend at least half of your time improving the operation, you get exposed pretty quickly,” Alvarez says.
A big part of working on the business is making sure employees
feel good about their job and where the company is going.
“It’s as simple as making sure they are heard, making sure that
the reviews are done on time, making sure that individuals that are
helping are getting larger raises and that employees that are not
pulling their weight do not stay,” Alvarez says.
As the CEO, Alvarez says you have your own responsibility
for where to direct your attention and what to leave to your
managers.
“We have this philosophy to tell me about the 20 percent of the
things that are real bad and tell me about the 20 percent of the things
that are real good so we can celebrate and understand the risks,”
Alvarez says. “But the 60 percent in the middle, which is basically
working on the business, their job is to manage that. I don’t need to
know that.
“Another fatal flaw with a lot of leaders is being too involved in
decision-making. Your people don’t grow. If they don’t grow, you’re
too involved. If you’re too involved, you can’t be on the strategic
side and working the vision. It’s that simple.”
By focusing on the strategic side and working to grow the business, Alvarez has been able to expand his company through acquisitions. After achieving 2006 revenue of $178 million, ABB Optical
merged in April 2007 with Con-Cise Contact Lens to form
ABB/CON-CISE North America, which now has just over 500
employees.
The key to the company’s success has been its ability to view setbacks as opportunities rather than failure.
“We have made a tremendous amount of mistakes that we were
able to overcome due to the fact we were always driven to increasing sales significantly,” Alvarez says. “I’m the guy with the sunglasses upside down with all the chips on the table. I’ve done that
several times. I never saw it as risk. I remember reading a book,
‘The Roaring 2000s.’ [Harry S. Dent Jr.’s] analysis was some people
see it as risk and some don’t, and I just didn’t see it as risk.”
As the leader, you can’t be afraid of mistakes.
“Live with the individuals that you’re allowing to make mistakes,
and bite your tongue and let them find their own way,” Alvarez
says. “One of my favorite things my father taught me a long time
ago was anytime we would go by a cemetery, he would always
look and say, ‘Those guys thought they were indispensable also.’
It’s about letting your team find their own way and letting them
grow, and hopefully, they prove you wrong most of the time.”
HOW TO REACH: ABB/CON-CISE, (800) 852-8089 or www.abboptical.com
