Perhaps someone forgot to tell Thad Simons that this wasn’t a permanent gig. As interim CEO of Novus International Inc., he was just supposed to keep the seat warm until a full-time leader could be found.
“No one expected me to take the job seriously,” says Simons, who would eventually become president and permanent CEO. “As interim, you’re not supposed to do anything. You’re supposed to just keep the company going.”
But Simons wanted to do more than that. He had been with Novus for more than a decade as general counsel and helped the company establish its own identity after separating from Monsanto Co. in 1991.
“The reason our product is provided is to make up the nutritional balance for good growth and health,” Simons says of his company, which provides nutrition for people, pets and livestock. “Our growth in the whole industry was following the phenomenal growth of the poultry industry worldwide.”
He watched the company grow throughout the economic boom of the 1990s and then fall as the economy struggled and ultimately gave away in the 2000s most of what it had gained.
“What had been very strong demand growth collapsed,” Simons says. “We went down to where we were barely making any money. Your shareholders are unhappy and the staff is unhappy because there are no bonuses and something has to change.”
Simons had a few ideas about how to get business moving again. He had some thoughts on the development of new products and services. He felt like he could make a positive difference for the business.
But these feelings clashed with the opinions of other leaders in the company who wanted to ride out the storm with a strategy that was less risky and more proven.
“One way of looking at it would have been to say, ‘We should hunker down and focus on the core and focus on what we’re strong in,’” Simons says. “There were certainly many people telling me, ‘This is what we should do. We should get rid of R&D and technical support and really look at ourselves as being a strong commodity supplier.’”
Maybe it would have been safer to do it that way at the company of more than 750 employees.
But Simons felt the potential reward of going all out to support his research and development team outweighed the risk of not always getting it right and experiencing a few failures along the way.
He just needed to get some people around him who felt the same way.
