Find reasons to believe
Survival has to be about more than just huddling up in a conference room to make cuts and then waiting for the economy to turn around. You need to make an effort to find opportunities for success and jump on them. You need to let your people know what these opportunities are, however limited they may be, and how to capitalize on them.
“You are the communicator in chief,” Cowan says. “You have to keep doing it. You have to talk about, ‘Yes, the times are tough.’ But you have to go out there and show them some rays of light, some hope that this too shall pass. The world isn’t coming to an end. Whatever cliché works for you. Here are the sparks.”
American Railcar looked into the more than 700 parts that make up a railcar.
“We only make a few hundred of them and we buy the rest,” Cowan says. “Where could we do more integration into our own internal supply? Where did it make sense to do that?
“Our innovation teams work on different components of the car that the customer is looking for improvement on,” Cowan says. “We’ve made all car types in the last 110 years. But with some, the market has been so depressed we haven’t made them or we’ve been out of them for a few decades. So we’ve gotten back into a few other car types. Those are areas where a team of folks have to get involved. The short answer is keep the people focused on growth and new exciting opportunities within the company.”
It’s not that you’re ignoring what happened and you certainly don’t want to discourage people who have questions and concerns from bringing those up with you.
“You can’t be afraid to talk about it,” Cowan says. “It’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room. You have to tell them, ‘It’s tough. We don’t like it. We wish it hadn’t happened.’ … Try to keep it as positive as you can.”
As Cowan looks to the future, being positive is beginning to get easier.
“I have $330 million of cash in the bank,” Cowan says. “We’re investing a small amount in India, and we’re going to build product that stays in India. It’s not going to come back here and displace American workers. We’ve also started to see some of the customers that normally only buy railcars every five to eight years realizing they had a great opportunity to buy at a fairly low price.
“We’ve had a lot of growth initiatives that our board has allowed us to pursue. We continue to look for other areas to excel and grow. We’ve broadened our product mix and our customer footprint from where we were two years ago. All of that is positive. It can make us a little more picky in terms of products we do produce. Hopefully, they’ll be at a strong margin for the company.”
How to reach: American Railcar Industries Inc., (636) 940-6000 or www.americanrailcar.com
