Cover Story
The last full measure
How Herb Shear uses data to guide GENCO Supply Chain Solutions to record revenue
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Pittsburgh | May 2008
Page 1 of 4
A lot has changed since Herb Shear began leading GENCO
Supply Chain Solutions more than 30 years ago.
For starters, the chairman, president and CEO of the reverse
logistics company only had 15 people with him in the beginning.
“So, obviously, your leadership style for managing 15 people
versus an organization today that has 7,000 people in 100 different locations — it’s significantly different,” he says. “So, I
had to evolve my leadership style and my leadership thinking
over that 36-year period because if I was doing the same leadership style that I did 36 years ago, the company would probably implode.”
One of the primary ways he’s found to make sure everyone is staying true to the company’s mission is by relying heavily on data.
“You can’t manage a business without good, good data,” Shear
says. “If you continually manage from your gut, eventually you’re
going to have a problem. So, we like to make decisions based on
our data. Sometimes, you don’t have all the data, and you have to
just go with your gut. But, we like to get as much data as possible
to make our decisions with.”
The goal at GENCO is to have great customer and employee satisfaction and to be a profitable company — and each one of those
areas is measured to see just how well the company is doing.
“It’s more than just words to us,” Shear says. “We actually measure our customer satisfaction, our teammate satisfaction and our
profitability. We only consider ourselves a successful company if
we are doing well in all three. It’s like a three-legged stool. If one of
the legs is broken, we need to fix it.”
