Remember that guy in school who everyone referred to as “a brain?”
Sun Tzu Security’s Jim O’Brien is a certified whiz following his performance at a week-long certification process at Technologic, an Atlanta-based maker of computer network security systems.
In early February, the 24-year-old V.P. of information technology aced the Atlanta-based company’s practical test. Technologic makes the Interceptor firewall system, which protects private computer networks from unwanted intrusions.
In the six-year history of Technologic, O’Brien’s feat was a first, says Technologic’s Renee Landers. O’Brien actually scored higher than the engineers who developed the product.
“I don’t think he’d ever seen our product before,” Landers says. “Without being familiar with the interface, that’s pretty amazing.”
The average score on the practical part of the test was 74%. O’Brien proved that he is human, after all, on the written portion, scoring a mere 93%.
Sun Tzu is an authorized reseller of the Interceptor firewall solution.
Revenge of the nerd?
When Microsoft CEO Bill Gates visited here recently, local media coverage focused on his donation of an estimated $150,000 to Milwaukee Area Technical College’s computer lab. What wasn’t mentioned was Gates’ style, or lack thereof. For a man whose fortune has been estimated at $36 billion, Gates looked and acted the part of an understated software engineer in his rumpled blue suit, pinstriped broadcloth shirt and blue tie. The only thing that signaled this was a big-time guy was the small, but visible police presence and the Cadillac Fleetwood limo that whisked him away.
Heavy hitter
Two months ago in Small Business Times we noted that the new Midwest Express Center will weigh about 100,000 tons, according to engineering estimates.
Now, Miller Park officials tell us that the new baseball stadium will weigh about 500,000 tons, which may make it the heaviest structure in Wisconsin, equal in weight to a 50-story office tower. The tallest skyscraper in Wisconsin is the 40-story Firststar building in downtown Milwaukee.
The retractable roof alone at Miller Park will weigh about 10,000 tons, says Michael Morgan, communications manager for the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball District.
Not many other buildings approach the height of the Firstar tower. Miller Park’s height, by comparison, will be equal to a 22-story office building.
We are family
It’s not uncommon for business owners and employees to have pictures of their children on their desks or posted on the walls of their cubicles.
At Whittman-Hart, a national information technology consultancy with offices in Milwaukee, they go a step further.
Each office has a “Whittman-Hart Kid’s Wall,” displaying professionally-photographed pictures of employees’ children, notes Traci Kurtin, marketing director of the Milwaukee office. All employees with children are eligible to have a photo taken.
The Milwaukee wall has about 50 pictures, each shot by photographer Pat Goetzinger.
The pictures, says Robert Landgren, partner in charge of the Milwaukee office, reinforce the firm’s commitment to being family-friendly. Further, he notes, in an ideal world, people work because they like to. In the real world, people work to support their families; the pictures are a reminder of that reality.
“The pictures on the wall are there to remind management that there are lives outside of Whittman-Hart that we’re responsible for – such as college educations, mortgages and other financial needs of our families,” Landgren says.
The practice also gives the families an opportunity to order reprints of the photos and, Kurtin adds, bring an element of pride into the business.

Discord between supervisors hurts morale
Roadblock:
The owner of a small service firm is under considerable stress because of the problems caused by his two supervisors who don’t get along with each other. Both supervisors have some negative attributes, but they each also bring some real strengths to the organization.
One of them, on the down side, has a propensity for lying about small things and places unwarranted blame on the other supervisor. In addition, she undermines the company owner by supporting people’s complaints and siding with them against the policies of the firm. On the upside, she is very knowledgeable about the job and the industry, is well liked by the group she supervises, and she would be difficult to replace.
With the other supervisor there is no question about his commitment to the company. He takes on difficult tasks and works long hours. He has a good working relationship with the owner, but not with the group of people reporting to him. His resentment of the fact that “his” people go to the other supervisor for support is a continued source of conflict.
Morale in the office is down and so is productivity, and far too much of the owner’s time is spent addressing issues raised by the discord between the two supervisors.
Problem:
The owner is not fulfilling his leadership responsibilities. Only he can manage the performance of his supervisors. Failure to do so threatens the stability of the company and diminishes his credibility as a leader with a clear sense of purpose and direction. Tough choices and the need to resolve difficult situations come with the territory.
Solution:
This roadblock presents the owner with two issues to address. The first is the inability of his two supervisors to work together cooperatively. Many times people in the workplace find themselves working with someone with whom they have little in common or perhaps with a team member who has a difficult personality. People have their differences. Yet it must be made clear that professional courtesy and cooperation with others is a requirement of the job, no matter what the position. If someone is unable or unwilling to meet these requirements, then he or she should be replaced.
Has competitiveness between the two supervisors been inadvertently encouraged? Whatever the reasons, every effort should be made to coach the individual to correct the behavior and hold her accountable.
If these solutions don’t bring about the desired changes in the two supervisors, the owner’s only choice is to take steps to replace the offending supervisor – for the good of the company as well as for his own well-being.
Solutions to Roadblocks is provided by The Performance Group inc, a Brookfield training and consulting firm.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Larry Lauwasser remembers his early days as a CPA at a small Milwaukee firm back in the 1950s. He was working full-time at the firm after a stint with the Army, when a college student joined the firm part-time.
That part-timer was Robert Kolb, a business/accounting student at Marquette University who intended to go to law school. Working at the CPA firm was a means of paying his way through school.
Lauwasser saw something in that young Kolb that impressed him – an impression that’s lasted to this day at the West Allis-based CPA and business advisory firm, Kolb Lauwasser & Co.
“I recognized his talents and abilities right at the outset,” Lauwasser said during a recent interview at the firm’s West Allis offices. “Even as a student in his 20s, he exhibited talents and intelligence that have carried him to this point.”
Kolb Lauwasser is the ninth largest accounting firm in the Milwaukee area, and the largest locally-owned firm. Established in 1960 with three people, including Kolb and Lauwasser, the firm now has 10 other partners and employs about 75 people.
Kolb and Lauwasser realized early on that they couldn’t do it all themselves, so they started to bring partners into the firm.
“We realized we couldn’t grow if we didn’t bring in specialists,” Lauwasser says. “To expand your firm, you have to be willing to let go of a lot of responsibilities and bring in people who can specialize in those areas. You can’t know everything. Our realization of that has been a big factor in our growth.”
Trust built on mutual respect
Lauwasser credits Kolb’s keen analytical sense and vision for helping build the firm.
“He’s able to very early assess a problem, determine the key elements of the situation, and focus on solutions,” said Lauwasser. “He is an outstanding diagnostician.”
That analytical side of Kolb, says Lauwasser, is complemented by honesty, high ideals and a strong moral character grounded in his religious faith.
Add up those attributes and you have not only an outstanding accountant, Lauwasser says, but also an outstanding business partner.
“There’s no one individual I would say I respect more than him,” Lauwasser says. “He’s had a
The executive will have to see change, analyze it and act quickly on it.
– Bob Kolb, Partner Kolb Lauwasser
tremendous influence on my life. Just the way he conducts himself is inspiring.”
Likewise, apparently, for Kolb.
“We came from such different backgrounds,” Kolb said. “But we’ve come to have complete faith in each other. I even told my wife that if anything ever happens to me, she should call Larry.”
What’s kept the two partners together all these years is a respect for each other, Lauwasser says. “At the outset, what got us established and what’s kept us going was a mutual respect for each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Kolb’s 40-year career is being recognized this month by the Southeast Wisconsin Chapter of the Wisconsin Institute of CPAs, which is bestowing its 1998 Distinguished Career award upon him. And in April, Marquette University honored him at its Alumni National Awards Dinner with the 1998 Service to Marquette Award.
He’s seen much in his 40 years in the business, including all the economic cycles. But through all that, Kolb says he’s kept a focus on three things that have led to the firm’s success. One is a focus on talent, even when that meant paying higher salaries to attract good people. Another is complete honesty and uncompromising ethics. And hard work backs it all up.
“We don’t apologize for that,” Kolb says of the work-ethic. “We know that hard work will lead us to success. We’re lucky to be where we are, but I know where that luck came from: hard work.”
He realizes, however, that it’s a different world today from when he started in the business, relying on his wife Gerri for tremendous support at home, allowing him to spend endless hours at the office.
Today, with more wives working outside the home, spouses see more demands to tend to family matters rather than spend every evening and weekend at work.
“We’re well aware of the changes that have occurred, of the terrible pressure on professionals; we didn’t have to deal with that in past years,” Kolb says, noting the many 70-hour-plus weeks he’d work.
[One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the time-demands imposed on the entire staff at tax-time, when 40-hour weeks are far from the norm.]
Kolb grew up in what is now Milwaukee’s central city, and met his wife “and best friend of 37 years” while the two were students at Marquette University. The couple now has four grown children, two who also have attended Marquette, marking a third generation of the family to attend the university – Kolb’s mother was a 1921 MU grad.
When the firm was established in 1960, its motto was “We care,” handling clients’ accounts as though they were the firm’s own books, Kolb says.
Technological change
While that caring attitude and an outstanding integrity have remained constant through the years, Kolb has seen tremendous change in how business is handled, especially within the past five years.
“It didn’t used to be a capital-intensive business,” he recalls. “You basically needed pencils and erasers.” Now, computers are the tools of the trade. “I used to come into the office, take my handwritten messages, and turn on the adding machine. Now I flip on the computer, check for voice mail, check my schedule on the computer, and engage in video conferencing. It’s mind-boggling what’s happened in the last five years.”
He’s embraced that change, and says it’s incumbent for other business owners to do the same.
“The executive will have to see change, analyze it and act quickly on it,” he says, noting his definition of the acronym CEO as “change equals opportunity.”
Lauwasser notes that the firm embraced computerization early-on, using a system developed by Singer – the sewing machine manufacturer.
“Putting the practice on computers was a real hallmark for this firm,” Lauwasser says. “It gave us a lot of confidence to provide services that might not have been feasible to do by hand.”
The firm’s growth over the years has come solely from such moves and its marketing efforts. It never merged with or acquired another firm, nor has it ever bought another firm’s accounts. “We’ve always had the philosophy that we could expand the company on our own,” Kolb says.
The stature and reputation the firm enjoys today, he says, is a great satisfaction. “It shows we’ve done something right.”
And what is his secret to finding out what that “something right” is?
“All you have to do is talk to your clients,” Kolb says. “They start talking, and pretty soon they’re telling you what you should be doing.”
Position: Founding and managing partner in CPA and business advisory firm Kolb Lowausser & Co., 2400 S. 102nd St., West Allis.
Firm founded 1960.
First job: Milwaukee CPA firm
Most satisfying career-related accomplishment: Earning a reputation of trustworthiness, and seeing company grow from 3-person to 73-person firm.
Most admired persons: Wife Gerri and four children; college professors, particularly Charles Horngren; and business partner Larry Lauwasser.
Family: Wife Gerri and four children.
Education: Pius XI High School, Milwaukee; Marquette University (1958).
Currently reading: Los Alamos, a mystery novel by Joseph Kanon, published by Broadway Books.
Interests/hobbies: Golf, music
Supported organizations: Divine Savior Holy Angels High School Foundation, Marquette University, Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce/ Council of Small Business Executives (current chairman), Council of Growing Companies, International Group of Accounting Firms.
Words of wisdom: “Don’t be afraid of change; look at it, analyze it and act on your analysis. Opportunity awaits you if you apply hard work in responding to that change.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Falls printer is on the digital edge
When George Fiel set out on his own after more than 20 years in the pre-press industry, he knew his survival in the crowded field depended on his firm being different.
And that suited him just fine.
“I always wanted to do things differently and outside the box,” said Fiel, who, with his wife Erika, founded Image Systems in the basement of the family home in 1987. “I’ve always been excited about opportunity and about new technology.”
Opportunity has certainly presented itself in technology over the course of the firm’s 10 years in business. And Fiel has taken advantage of it, building a company that did $10 million in business last year and which now has 85 employees.
His visionary approach to technology in the printing business has paid off in another way: Consolidated Graphics, a publicly-traded giant in the industry, has agreed to purchase Image Systems for an undisclosed sum.
Fiel, who will remain as president of the Menomonee Falls firm, sees the acquisition as just one more proactive measure for his operation.
“With Consolidated Graphics, we join the most successful group of commercial printing companies in the United States,” Fiel said. “They share our long-standing commitment to advanced printing technologies, a commitment that has created for us a competitive advantage in our market.”
Upon completion of pending acquisitions, the Houston-based Consolidated Graphics will have 35 companies with annualized revenues in excess of $360 million. Consolidated Graphics has a policy of keeping management of acquired companies in charge, figuring that those persons are largely responsible for making the companies successful, says Consolidated chairman and CEO Joe R. Davis.
Davis calls Fiel an example of that expertise.
“George Fiel and his staff have dedicated themselves to providing their customers a superior product through hard work and exemplary customer service, as well as being a nationally recognized leader in the digital technology revolution.”
Fiel and Image Systems certainly are nationally recognized. Fiel is regularly quoted in printing industry trade journals, with such publications as Graphic Arts Monthly calling him a “pioneer in digital imaging systems.”
Fiel saw it all coming. The Pittsburgh native spent 20 years with Kodak – experience that not only steeped him in the ways of the industry but also gave him insight into where it was headed. Kodak’s own early predictions were that graphic arts film would be a thing of the past by 1998.
Film is still used in the graphic arts industry but, more and more, that part of the printing process is going digital.
And George Fiel has led the way since he began his business as a pre-press shop 10 years ago.
“Knowing that film would be phased out, how you got to that point would be different,” Fiel said. “So I knew I had to get into printing.”
Through an association with Heidelberg, a printing press manufacturer, in 1991 Fiel was able to have Image Systems become the first site in the United States to install a direct-imaging press. He continued to latch onto new technologies, adding a computer-to-plate system and becoming somewhat of a test site for various printing technologies.
Acquisition of a direct-imaging press prompted Fiel to move out of his Appleton Avenue facility into the present 55,000-square-foot facility in an industrial park just off Highway 41.
Fiel’s wife Erika, vice president of the firm, designed the plant with an open concept, allowing a visual connection between all steps of the printing process.
And while the Fiels have made sure the facility can accommodate the latest in printing technology, they’ve also made sure it speaks to the human element, too. The employee lunchroom, for example, not only has tables for eating, but also a pool table and a ping-pong table. Elsewhere in the facility they’ve installed exercise machines for employees to use. And, harking to Erika’s German birth, the facility also includes a German-themed lounge.
“We’ve striven to be a unique printer,” Fiel says, adding that if there hadn’t been a way to differentiate the firm, he never would have gone into the business. “Our goal has always been to be a leader in the digital arena. It gives us an edge.”
Fiel also early on saw the advantages of Internet connectivity; more than half of Image System’s work comes into the plant via modem rather than on some sort of disk or paper.
Image Systems continues on the cutting edge, now working with a 6-color printing process rather than the traditional 4-color. The process, which Image Systems is using for some Fortune 100 clients, produces more brilliant, true-to-life colors on product packaging and catalogs, and on other printed items.
“Almost anything that comes out, we’re in the forefront,” said Fiel, who estimates the company spends about 2% of its budget on R&D each year. “We’ve become known as the company that’s willing to take risks.”
He sees an industry taking greater advantage of information technologies, calling it a new paradigm of communications. In that paradigm, the old “print and distribute” methods are being switched to “distribute and print,” whereby the information is distributed digitally and whereby printing is done where it’s most efficient.
It will also mean a greater targeting of printed material such as catalogs, to the point of such items being individualized for the recipient.
To take part in the new world of printing will require more resources that an individual printer can muster, Fiel believes.
“You need to be part of something bigger than yourself. If I hadn’t joined Consolidated Graphics, I would have become an unnetworked island,” he says. “So joining them is a strategic move for Image Systems for the year 2000 and beyond.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

How to overcome the anxiety of public speaking
If you were asked to list the things in life you fear the most, I dare say that the fear of speaking in public would be at or close to the top of your list.
You’re not alone. According to statistics, it’s stronger than the fear of dying, followed by financial ruin, spiders and snakes.
The dictionary describes fear as a “feeling of alarm or dread caused by the expectation of danger, pain, or disaster.”
Fear is a natural emotion that we all experience from time to time. It warns us when we’re in danger. Without it, we would probably not survive. Irrational fear, on the other hand, is a destructive, self-defeating emotion that prevents us from achieving our fullest potential. It represents lost opportunities as it robs us of our self-confidence and limits our personal growth. The fear of not measuring up to expectations can be overwhelming.
If you’re a non-professional speaker, being asked to speak in public can easily throw you into a panic. The thought of all those eyes looking at you is like an alarm bell setting off butterflies, weak knees, tight throat, shortness of breath and a trembling voice. What to do?
To reduce your anxiety and put the problem in perspective, you need to identify the cause of your fears.
The fears most commonly voiced by my clients in my coaching and workshops are:
Making mistakes – It’s not the mistakes you make that are the problem. It’s how you handle them. Everyone makes mistakes. If it’s a small one, ignore it and move on. The audience probably will never notice it unless you visibly or verbally react to it. If it’s one you can’t ignore, don’t apologize.
Acknowledge it and, if possible, treat it with humor. The audience will appreciate the ease with which you handled it.
Being boring – If you expect to be boring, you will be. Know your subject thoroughly and speak from the heart. Be sincere and let your audience know you’re enjoying yourself. (If you’re not, pretend you are. Public speaking is acting in disguise.) Use inflection, phrasing, pauses and word stress to give vitality and nuance to your words. If you sound interested, you’ll be interesting.
Freezing or forgetting – Avoid memorizing your speech. If you’re the least bit nervous, you’re sure to freeze – and forget. Memorize your opening to help you settle down and get past the nervousness of the first few minutes. Memorize your closing to enable you to finish with direct eye contact. If you use notes or a script, use large print with plenty of white space for easy reading. Avoid being glued to the text by making frequent eye contact with the audience; they’re not interested in seeing the top of your head. The audience wants to see your eyes and the expression on your face.
To bring your fear until control, prepare yourself thoroughly. The more you know about your subject, the less stress you’ll feel. It’s difficult to communicate effectively when you’re afraid, nervous or under stress. Think positively and visualize yourself speaking like a pro.
Turn off all negative thoughts and follow these few suggestions:
Practice – There’s no substitute. Practice may not make you perfect but it will certainly make you more comfortable and relaxed. Zig Ziglar practices before every speech. If Ziglar, one of the top speakers in the country, considers it important, so should you.
Practice often and out loud, preferably as you stand – Use a tape recorder and/or video camera to become familiar with the sound of your voice, style of delivery and body language. Invite friends and family to listen to you and ask for comments and suggestions.
Relax and be yourself – Before beginning your speech, inhale deeply several times to help you relax. Using your full lung capacity rather than breathing high in the chest will help you stay relaxed. Talk to your audience, not at them. Be warm in your delivery and use a comfortable conversational style to allow your personality to come through. Audiences relate to the “likable” speaker. And don’t be afraid of moments of silence. The audience will never notice what can seem like an eternity to you.
Use humor – Humor in your opening will relax you and warm up the audience. Wherever possible, pepper your speech with pertinent stories and incidents that are humorous, even though your topic may be serious. It establishes a connection with the audience.
Advance preparation – Success is in the details. Avoid problems by checking the details well in advance – the type and theme of the meeting, the number and gender of attendees, special interests of the audience, other speakers who have been scheduled and where in the program you will be appearing. Request any equipment you plan to use well in advance. If possible, arrange an on-site rehearsal to determine that everything is operating properly.
Fear can make you nervous but nerves need not make you fearful. While fear is difficult to channel, nerves, when channeled into energy, can be a positive force bringing vitality and enthusiasm into your speech. Musicians, actors, speakers and performers rely on nervous energy to enhance their performance. You can, too. Control your fear rather than allowing it to control you.
Your goal is to be comfortable and enjoy speaking before an audience. Create as many opportunities for speaking in public as possible. Join Toastmasters, a community theater group, or take coaching or a class in public speaking or dramatics. Speaking in front of others doesn’t need to be dreaded. It can be fun!
Speech coach June Johnson is president of Voice Power of Milwaukee. She can be reached at 332-0926 or via e-mail at voicepwrl@aol.com.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Know what you’r edoing before you negotiate the lease for your business
For those seeking office or industrial space, representation by an experienced broker will save the user considerable time and money in his search, maintains Jack Quinlevan, a vice president with Trammell Crow’s Milwaukee office.
The commission paid by the building owner to the broker is typically three percent of the annual gross rent on a five-year lease and will be more than made up for in properly negotiated terms and conditions, Quinlevan says.
However, for those who want to go it alone in their search for office or industrial space, it pays to keep a few things in mind.
First, ask yourself how much space your firm requires, and how much space you will need two to four years from now, Quinlevan says.
Also, let’s say you’ve got a sales force of 10 people. Do you want them working in enclosed spaces? Or, do you place them out on a main floor separated by dividers. The enclosed option will cost more every time, Quinlevan says.
You also have to have a firm grasp of how long the process takes. Each step takes time: the search, the building walk-through, the space planning, requesting proposals, counter-proposals, negotiating the lease points, completing the construction documents, and the actual build-out of the space.
Remember, the listing broker can be overly optimistic in terms of the time it takes to complete the deal and get the prospective tenant into the building. Build more time into the equation.
Here are some other key points to remember, Quinlevan says:
Timing is critical – When does your lease expire, and what is the lease holdover language? If you don’t leave on time – say your lease expires May 31 and you have to stay longer – some lease documents say the landlord can automatically hold you over for another year. “It’s very contentious,” Quinlevan says. “Some guys find this out and they start screaming.”
Image – Do you want to be in the Firstar Center or a lower profile single-story office/industrial-type building? “Some people have told me that they don’t want to be in Class A high-rise space because their clients will think that they are charging more so they can pay their rent,” Quinlevan says.
Signage – If you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. There is pylon signage on a totem-pole-like stack out front, or there is building signage. “If you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it,” Quinlevan says. Or, is it reserved for the largest tenant in the building? Don’t forget to ask about being included in directory signage and suite signage, both of which are considered standard.
Tenant mix – Be aware of who is in the building. You want to be sure you know who your neighbors are, and that they provide a good complement to your own business.
Negotiation points: unless you are experienced, it is hard to know the landlord’s asking rate and the deal rate. Some building owners may ask $20 per square foot, but the deal range is $18.50 to $19 in the actual deals as they are made.
Rentable vs. usable square feet – When comparing buildings, know the difference between rentable square feet and usable square feet. Usable square feet is the amount in between the walls. Rentable square feet incorporates common space such as halls, and bathrooms and lobbies. This can add 10 to 15 percent to the overall cost, Quinlevan says.
Tenant improvements – Understand what landlords are willing to provide in terms of tenant improvements. Keep in mind that landlords love to deal with tenants that are willing to take the space as is. However, in some cases, landlords are willing to pay up to $15 per square foot for improvements. “Often, people walk into an office, and they say it looks fine,” Quinlevan says. “What they don’t realize is that the landlord is willing to knock down walls and redo the space.”
Lease terms – Typical lease duration terms are five years, although some landlords will go three years. In some cases, landlords will offer 10-year terms with exit points negotiated at five years. There is a decided cost savings for locking in at 10 years, and you have the ability to get out and renegotiate if the market takes a turn, Quinlevan says.
Expansion options – If you are in a growth company and you need a defined amount of square feet, you’ll want to negotiate the option to expand into additional square feet. If you don’t negotiate it, the landlord could easily lease it out from under you. That could mean you have to sit packed into your space for the next five years when it’s too small for you.
Parking – Parking is scarcer in parts of downtowns than in the suburbs. If you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. So you
“People will walk into an office space and say it looks fine. What they don’t realize is that the landlord is willing to knock down walls and redo the space.”
– Jack Quinlevan, Trammel Crow
need to ask and negotiate this up front. “In one deal we negotiated, we saw that there was a vacant space in the lot with four parking spots, so we grabbed those,” Quinlevan says. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get it, and it’s never volunteered.”
Lease language – Some leases are strongly slanted toward the landlord. You need to take a careful look at this, or, have an attorney review the lease on your behalf.
When performing your search, don’t forget to ask around, Quinlevan says.
“Somebody who is looking may want to talk to other tenants and ask them what the heating and cooling systems are like, whether building management is responsive, and whether tenancy is stable.” Also find out how many times the building has been bought and sold in recent years, Quinlevan says.
Finally, be prepared for escalations in rent, operating expense, and taxes.
The real estate investment trusts (REITS) have come into the Milwaukee area marketplace, and they need to show growth to their investors. So they are raising the rent. A typical increase would be two percent, Quinlevan says.
In most negotiated leases, the owner tends to pay the tenant’s portion of the operating expenses and real estate taxes for the first year of the lease. After that, the tenant will be responsible for any increases on a pro rata basis, with the tenant paying above a certain fixed amount.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Third Ward office design is way out of the box

For the majority of us, the office is a utilitarian environment where we show up, do our work, and go home. We don’t complain about glaring overhead lights, noise distractions, or confining cubicles parked at right angles which seem to block out the world around us.
After all, it’s an office, right? The message inherent in most office design is that work is an activity not meant to be enjoyed. With everything placed at right angles and uninspired colors covering the floors and walls, is it any wonder that people feel dull at work?
But for the relative few who have the good fortune to work in an inspirational office setting, the office environment is a source of energy from which creativity naturally flows. The medium is the message.
More often than not, advertising agencies are on the cutting edge of contemporary office design. That is certainly the case with Marx McClellan Thrun, a six-person agency in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.
From the moment one sets foot in the 4,000-square-foot space on the sixth floor of the Marshall Building, you realize this is an office that transcends the merely ordinary.
Marx McClellan Thrun’s low-ceilinged reception area, while modest, gives a hint of what lies ahead. Six black wooden icons affixed to the wall serve as metaphors for what the agency does. There is a bowling ball, a black cat, a dagger, dice – all which serve to illustrate the nature of the work that the agency juggles, says principal Rick Thrun.
"We’ve been successful because every day we juggle lots of dangerous things for some very special clients," Thrun says. "And yet we still manage to have some fun."
Heading from the reception area into the main office, the visitor is greeted by views of the Third Ward skyline which is visible through the large, old-fashioned casement-style windows. Two metallic stairwells lead to an office loft. Colorful portrait murals by local artist Tom Porter stand out against Cream City brick walls.
In another subtle but perceptible shift, nearly everything about the office is flowing at 45-degree or odd angles. Nothing is set up on traditional 90-degree lines. Even the odd-shaped cubicle walls take on this effect. Sight lines flow in virtually all directions.
"No matter where you are in here, you can see out," Thrun says. "We didn’t want to make people feel that they were walled off. At the same time, we also didn’t want to come up with a space that was overdesigned, or overdecorated.
Before the $43,000 remodeling was done in 1995, the agency occupied the office much as it was from the previous tenant, a photographer who both lived in the space and used it as his studio loft.
One of the primary goals for remodeling the wide open space was to give everyone his or her own workspace while maintaining the feeling of openness and light.
Taken together, the overall feel of the office is one of airiness combined with industrial chic. Throw in some imaginative interior design elements, and you’ve got an office that positively oozes the feeling that cool advertising concepts are just waiting to be born.
The office was designed over three years ago by Ed Miller of the Winters Design Group, who also helped agency principals Rick Thrun and Laura Marx remodel their 1935 home. Miller credits Thrun with helping him take some of his ideas to the next level.
"I think they needed a space that lets their clients know that they are in the right place if they are looking for innovative ideas and exciting artwork," says Miller, who won the National Remodeling Industry Association’s Contractor of the Year Award in 1996 for his work on the office.
"We didn’t want people to walk in and get the impression that six people are sitting at Macintosh computers doing design work," Miller says. "We wanted to convey a sense of energy, that this is a place that is not static. For the customer/client, this space shows that members of the agency are not status-quo thinkers."
Marx McClellan Thrun’s clients include Johnson Controls, Briggs & Stratton, Motorola, Concours Motors and Lake Park Bistro.
A kitchen the photographer put in has been retained, and works well as a separate area within the redesigned space. Brick walls that were painted white were sandblasted.
"It was too ’60s/’70s, kind of ‘pop’ looking," Miller recalls. "It needed to be updated to the ’90s into something more refined."
One of the first moves made by Miller and Thrun was to carpet over the checkerboard pattern linoleum floor
"We wanted to convey a sense of energy, that this is a place that is not static."
– Ed MIller, Winters Design Group
that dominated the space. Not only did the carpet provide sound abatement, but it gave the space a more professional look, Thrun said.
The large pillars that stand in the room were painted gray, as was the ceiling. Industrial-type lights hang off the pillars and point skyward. Steel cables fan out across the ceiling like spokes from a wheel, giving it added visual texture.
Partition walls are painted in warm colors like eggplant and terra cotta. Placement of corrugated steel on curved surfaces and glass block in random, but strategic, order inside dividing walls adds an element of sophistication.
Two metal stairways lead up to the loft. One of the stairways is surrounded by curved partition walls which play off the rounded walls at the top of the stairs, providing the staircase with a more cohesive look.
Thrun’s design studio looks out over the floor below. Marx has her own separate office with a door on the first floor, as she performs a lot of the nitty-gritty financial work for the firm which requires a higher level of privacy. Jagged-edge concrete panels with steel reinforcing bars protruding are placed at the front of the loft near Thrun’s office. The fractured panels perched at the top of the loft are meant to create the abstract feeling of being in a deconstruction zone.
There are several conference rooms, including a more formal one off the reception room that, in reality, is anything but formal in terms of design. Suspended industrial-style lightning aimed down at the table is the dominant feature of the room, which has Cream City brick walls. The other conference area is in a partially enclosed space in the main room. On a steel table, this is where much of the decision-making for the group takes place on Monday mornings. Clients and vendors are also brought here.
"We wanted to make it a place that clients would enjoy coming to," Thrun says. "When vendors and other people that we work with come here, it’s a place they remember."

May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Miller Brewing fund helps tradesmen get started
Orlando Arce knew that if he wanted to get ahead in the world, he would need the tools of his trade.
Trouble is, those tools are expensive. And in many of the trades, employees are expected to have their own tools, especially at smaller firms. But even at larger firms, employees often need to bring in some of their own tools.
Arce, however, didn’t just sit on his desire. He attended classes as Milwaukee Area Technical College and did so well that he was awarded a set of shop tools through the Tools for Success program sponsored by Miller Brewing Co.
Since its introduction in Milwaukee six years ago, Tools for Success has assisted more than 180 MATC students with more than $185,000 worth of tools. This year alone, 21 MATC students in 20 different fields won the tool scholarships. The scholarships are based on the students’ academic achievements, career goals, community service, biographical statements and references from faculty and community members.
“Before I won the scholarship, I had to borrow tools to do my job,” said Arce, an auto body and paint technician who works for Lou’s Autobody Carstar. “It’s better to have your own tools. The program has helped me out in my career to a very large degree.”
Arce, who won his tools last year, said he would have been in a bind without the tools scholarship.
Tools scholarships range from $600 to $2,500 worth of tools. But because Miller works with MATC to buy the tools through educational channels, a scholarship can include equipment valued at up to $10,000.
Arce’s story is not unlike the hundreds of other persons who’ve won tools through the Miller-sponsored program in Wisconsin, California, Texas, Ohio and Puerto Rico – they have one final hurdle to qualify for jobs in their selected fields. That hurdle being tool ownership.
The program not only benefits the worker, it also benefits employers, say Jack MacDonough, chairman
“Before I won the scholarship,
I had to borrow tools to do my job … The program has helped me out in my career to a large degree.”
– Orlando Arce, Lou’s Autobody Carstar
and CEO of Miller Brewing, noting the tight labor market that businesses must deal with. “We’re facing a critical shortage of skilled labor, and no issue is more important to the future of the collective workforce. Young people and those looking for new careers have shied away from entering the trades over the years, and now we must address this problem head-on if we hope to solve it.”
The Tools for Success program, he says, is one way Miller is tackling the problem.
Miller started the program in Los Angeles in 1991 after seeing a growing need for skilled tradesmen, said Julie Kubasa, corporate communications representative for Miller. Through the years, “it’s helped us publicize that America needs more people in the trades,” she added.
For MATC, the program is a boost for its skilled trades disciplines, says Donna McCarty, director of college relations. “It really helps us encourage people to go into the trades,” she said, adding that for many people, a career in the trades can be financially rewarding.
“The lowest pay-range of the jobs these people are moving into is $9 to $10 an hour while the highest is $18 to $20 an hour,” she said.
The demand for workers is there. “For every graduate we have, there are five job offers,” McCarty notes. The U.S. Department of Labor says a growing percentage of the workforce will be comprised of skilled labor.
For some of the scholarship winners, the tools they get are the only ones they own. For others, having an extra set allows them to have a set of tools on the job and one at home for sideline work.
Miller, Kubasa noted, is a very active benefactor to many causes. But the Tools program is a favorite, Kubasa says. “Of all the corporate programs we have, this one is most special. It makes the giving so much more real when you can see an individual recipient and when you know the impact of the giving on that person’s life. And when you see what some of these students have overcome, it really is rewarding for us.”
McCarty is similarly enthusiastic about the program, especially since it provides an extra recognition for accomplished students at the end of their studies.
And for many of the students, the awards ceremony is recognition the likes of which they’ve never felt. “It’s a real self-esteem builder,” McCarty says. “Many of the students will say they’ve never had an honor like this.”
May 1998 Small Business Times,Milwaukee

Geoffrey Martin lives in Mequon, but he put his business elsewhere. Martin, executive vice-president of Pope Scientific, likes living in Mequon, but he’s relocating his growing business from Menomonee Falls to the Saukville Industrial Park. Martin’s new 44,000-square-foot facility should be complete by August.
“We looked in Menomonee Falls, Germantown, Grafton and the Cedarburg areas, but we avoided Mequon because the land there is too pricey,” Martin said. “I live in Mequon and would have liked to have my business close by, but I didn’t want to deal with the city government there.”
Easy freeway access and affordable land prices led Martin to locate his firm, which manufactures distillation equipment for the chemical industry, to Saukville.
“Saukville was the place to go,” Martin said. “They want the industry and were willing to work with us. Ninety-nine percent of my employees will go with me, so labor won’t be an issue. It was a real pleasure working with Saukville. They did everything but shine your shoes. They were so open to working with us.”
That’s good news to Chris Lear, Saukville’s village administrator. Saukville owns and promotes its industrial park and wants to see businesses there succeed.
“We’ve got five new buildings going up in the industrial park this year,” Lear said. “That’s in addition to the growth planned at Charter Steel, our biggest employer, which has added a $100 million addition to its physical structure. We will do whatever we can to help our industries grow and grow our industrial park at the same time.”
Ann Murray, president of the Grafton Chamber of Commerce, said the village of Grafton is the industrial hub of the Ozaukee County.
“The first phase of the Grafton Industrial Park is complete and the second phase has at least three firms there now and more are coming,” Murray said.” In the past, it was easier to get industry here, but with the difficulty in getting good employees, it’s become more challenging.”
Besides attracting industry, Grafton hopes to bring in new business to its downtown area. A master plan to redevelop the downtown is in the works.
“Finally we’re seeing some much-needed changes,” Murray said. “Some buildings are for sale downtown and we would like to see business owners get the help they need to make their businesses successful. We will have small business loans available to them. As a chamber, we do a good job of recruiting new businesses and helping them to feel comfortable in the community.”
While Saukville and Grafton bend over backwards to help businesses locate there, Mequon takes a different approach.
“Most communities say ‘What can we do for development,’ but in Mequon we say ‘What can development do for us,'” said Brad Stenke, the city’s community development director. “We can be more selective about the development we have here. We are mainly interested in providing regional services for the people who live in our community.”
While Mequon has 300 acres set aside for industrial development and an additional 100 acres for commercial/office development, it’s in no hurry to develop it.
“If someone wants to locate here they have to come to the table with the type of development we feel is in our best interest,” Stenke said. “But once you are here, our feeling is that we want you to prosper and we will work with you to see that you are profitable.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Not even the CEO has an office at firm’s new quarters
When the staff of the Milwaukee engineering firm of Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates was planning the firm’s new office space last year, they knew they wanted to project a professional, high-tech image.
But whether that image would be projected through an open-concept office, or through a facility with individual offices would become a central issue for the discussions.
“We discussed it at length,” says Rich Bub, CEO and a principal of the firm. The sticky situation that kept cropping up in those discussions was, if there were going to be offices in the new facility, who would get one and who wouldn’t?
That was not only seen as an immediate dilemma, but one that could continually crop up. If the company had decided to build offices for employees above a certain level, what would happen if a cubicled employee were promoted to an officed level position?
What followed those thoughts was the concern of how the non-officed group would react to being left out.
“It came down to a situation of, if this group has offices, why not that group, too?,” says Bub, a proponent of the open concept.
Thus the push for the open concept, in which no one would get an office. “That became our biggest seller,” he says of the some-or-none scenario. “It would have been a harder sell if I were to get an office while others didn’t.”
Further, it was determined that an open-plan concept would offer far more flexibility for staff changes.
The firm’s board was very sensitive to getting the entire staff to accept the open-plan idea, noted Cynthia Gall and Jane Dederling of Engberg Anderson Design Partnership, the architectural and design firm which handled the office design.
The principals and staff bought into the egalitarian approach, and the firm moved into its new open-concept offices in the Honey Creek Corporate Center development March 7.
The 22.5-acre Honey Creek Corporate Center, just off 84th Street adjacent to I-94 in Milwaukee, is a project of Opus North Corp.
Graef, Anhalt Schloemer & Associates anchors the first of three similar buildings planned for the site. G.A.S. has 36,000 square feet on the third and fourth floors, with an option to lease additional space in the 118,000-square-foot building. Superior Services, a West Allis-based nationwide waste services company, recently announced that it would move to the development, leasing 16,000 square feet.
In selecting an open concept, Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates is following a trend, according to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA). More managers at US and Canadian offices are now working in open-plan workspaces than three years ago, according to IFMA’s new research report, Benchmarks III.
The open concept is seen as more conducive to camaraderie while the office set-up can reinforce hierarchical patterns.
“It gives the feeling that everyone is in this together, the CAD technician to the owners,” Bub says. “There’s a real teamwork mentality promoted.”
There is, however, some respect for hierarchy and for work needs. Bub, for example, has a larger work station than other persons at the firm. But basically, there are two sizes of “cubicles.”
The IFMA report indicates that while open-plan workspaces are more common among corporate professionals, senior clerical, and general clerical employees, the use of open spaces has increased the most among middle management.
The current mix of office type revealed by the study is 58% open plan (spaces divided by movable partitions), 36% private (offices enclosed by floor-to-ceiling walls), and 6% bullpen (open areas without partitions).
A recent study by office furniture manufacturer Steelcase showed that only 17% of workers desire a corner office – once deemed the most coveted office space. And office furniture maker Haworth has seen a marked increase in its sales of systems developed for open-plan offices. Other firms have seen similar increases in sales of open-plan office products.
“Call it what you want: open-plan, systems furniture, or cubicle, it’s a great answer to a business’s need to promote better communications and collaboration among their workers,” says Sheri Cuccarese, Haworth’s director of product marketing and development.
Dederling, of Engberg Anderson, notes that in the Milwaukee area, there’s still a demand for private offices for upper management. But those spaces are not only smaller, but they are more often incorporating both exterior and interior windows, allowing management to see the staff and the staff to see management.
Besides the change in corporate culture, another factor driving firms toward open offices is money, Dederling says, with owners seeing cost savings in open-plan concepts.
The new Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates facility isn’t without enclosed spaces. In fact, there are 15 conference rooms in the site. When privacy is needed, or when a large group of employees gather on an issue, the rooms are available. But even those conference rooms share in the open-ambiance, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the main office space rather than solid walls. “The glass walls add to the open feeling,” said Engberg Anderson’s Gall.
A lunchroom can double as a meeting space when needed.
Otherwise, the site is planned to promote people being together rather than being off by themselves, Bub says.
Bub sees two main attributes of the open-plan concept. First is visibility; everyone, not just partners with offices, gets to look out a window. “It allows a view of the outside world without having to look through a manager’s office,” he says. No cubicles are stationed along the main length of the offices; rather, the space is reserved for an aisle, allowing everyone to share in the view of what is planned to be a pond-centered prairie-style courtyard. That window-side aisle also allows more natural lighting to flow into the entire office area, Dederling notes. Everyone at G.A.S. also has access to a deck off the fourth floor.
The open concept is additionally intended to promote greater and quicker communications among the staff, Bub says.
There was a significant concern about noise levels in the open office, concerns that were addressed by the design of the office and materials selection. Work centers that were seen as noise producers – such as the mail room and paper copiers – were consolidated. Hard walls rather than partitions were used in some locations to hold back noise. Ceiling tiles and panel fabrics were selected with noise abatement in mind. A “white noise” system was installed. And along aisles, higher cubicle panels were used.
Within cubicles, employees are discouraged from tacking too many items to the panels. Pictures, papers and other items on panel walls thwarts their noise-reduction capabilities, Gall says.
Aside from those measures, Bub says he’s noticed a difference in the voice levels used among the staff. “They end up talking softer,” he says.
During a reporter’s visit, despite considerable activity the office atmosphere was one of peace and tranquillity rather than noise and commotion.
The acoustically-friendly facility stands in contrast to the firm’s former offices at the Milwaukee Engineering Center – the old St. Therese Catholic grade school about a mile west of the new site. The original use of that facility has been restored by the Milwaukee Montesorri School.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Don’t let big account list force you into reactive mode
Question:
I feel a little guilty saying this. I have too much business and find myself being reactive to my sales territory. I am afraid that I am neglecting some of my current accounts. Any suggestions?
Answer:
This is a common situation in today’s economy. Some may say it’s a good problem.
It’s still a problem.
If you have been involved in sales during leaner times, then you know how important it is to retain and nurture the business that you have. Too many accounts can cause sales people to become reactive rather than strategic in approach to their territories.
Here are some ideas:
Are you working on the right kind of business? Sometimes inquiries from new potential customers can seem like a priority. If those inquiries are keeping you from developing more profitable business with your current customers and/or other more desirable potential accounts, refer the business to someone else, either internally or externally.
Don’t be afraid to refer business to resources outside of your organization. By demonstrating that you care about taking care of the customer’s needs, you will reinforce that you are a valuable resource and will position yourself for future business.
Categorize and prioritize your accounts. Define the most desirable accounts and most profitable business for your company. Those should become your priority accounts. Then, rank the remaining accounts according to long-term business potential. Depending on how many accounts you are managing, you may end up with two or three categories such as type A, B and C accounts. As new account inquiries are made, categorize them immediately in order to stay focused on the appropriate actions.
Develop account plans for your top accounts. Type A, or priority accounts, typically are those that reflect the most profitable and long-term business potential. Develop a strategic account plan for each of those including the customer’s long- and short-term goals, how you are positioned to help meet those goals, and a communication plan for interacting with the account influencers on a regular basis. Those accounts warrant the majority of your sales/service time. A general rule of thumb is to spend time in your accounts proportionate to the sales potential.
Develop plans for the existing accounts, or type B and C accounts. If you have determined that those accounts warrant your attention and reflect long-term business potential, then you must communicate with them on a regular basis. However, that does not mean that the communication has to be face-to-face. You may develop a communication plan for all Type B accounts, for instance, which would include methods that you would use to simply stay in touch and receive feedback from the accounts. It is best to get feedback from these customers to see what type of communication they expect and prefer.
Examples may be that all Type B accounts receive the following:
Annual sales visits with review of goals and objectives. Quarterly newsletters. Monthly phone calls. Semi-annual survey and response forms.
Get others involved. Are there others within your company that would benefit from account contact? For example, pairing technical people from your company with technical people within your accounts not only frees you up, but will solidify multi-level relationships. This is also a wonderful way to develop associates who wish to develop a better understanding of your business. A visit, or even a phone call, from your president to the account president sends the message that the relationship is important to you.
Assign temporary responsibilities. If your company is experiencing a growth spurt, you may wish to assign certain individuals to temporary account responsibility. For instance, if your strength is developing new account relationships, you may assign a service person to develop ongoing relationships in your existing accounts.
Do some gardening. Weed out accounts that drain you of your time with little return. No one likes to turn down business, yet the time that you save can be spent to cultivate more profitable relationships.
Marcia Gauger is president of Impact Sales Training in New Berlin.
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Two years ago, Terry Tarillion felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.
The 52-year-old executive was in the process of moving his company, Heritage Printing & Graphics Center, to a new facility in Brookfield, and there was considerable pressure and uncertainty tied to the move. At the time, Tarillion was engaged in a never-ending struggle with city officials over building code restrictions. The company also took on a large amount of debt for both the building and new printing equipment as part of a strategic shift Tarillion was implementing.
Then, in the middle of the move, two of his three key employees unexpectedly left the company. One was a print shop manager who came down with a rare bone disorder. “About the time we really needed him, he was gone,” Tarillion recalls. The other, a trusted sales and marketing manager who had been with the company for 16 years, up and left for Prairie du Chien to start her own business with her husband.
With uncertainty surrounding the company’s future, Tarillion started to show the signs of stress. He visited a doctor for stomach problems. Then, with the pressure of work weighing on him, he started neglecting his marriage and having trouble at home.
“There was a lot of uncertainty,” Tarillion recalls. “It was like, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ It was a period of time when chaos reined. There was this constant background of doubt and fear creeping in. We had long-term people showing physical and mental strain. It is not a time I would like to go through again.”
The more he leaned on himself for solutions, it seemed the worse things got, Tarillion recalls. Ultimately, he says it was his Christian faith that pulled him through.
“Terry realized the job is not the end-all,” observes Poul Sanderson, a Milwaukee psychotherapist who specializes in executive stress counseling. “He empowers his employees, seeks outside counsel, and he’s well-rounded. That’s why I think he’s successful.”
Many are not as fortunate, succumbing to stress in the form of heart disease, migraine headaches and all manner of debilitating illnesses. The American Institute of Stress reports that anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of all doctor visits are stress-related. A report issued in 1992 by the United Nations called job stress the United States’ largest export. Stress-related ailments cost US corporations as much as $300 billion a year, according to a study by Cornell University.
According to Jo Hawkins Donovan, a Milwaukee corporate consultant and psychologist, when the pressure of living with ordinary and extraordinary events exceeds our capacity to cope, we start to exhibit the symptoms of stress. Our physical and mental health starts to deteriorate.
Tend your garden
Hawkins Donovan once treated an executive in his mid-40s who came to her completely burned out. The man had risen through the ranks as a high-energy over-achiever to become head of a 500-employee Milwaukee company.
Over time, the executive ignored the early warning signs such as irritability, lack of enthusiasm for the job and not being able to sleep. The man didn’t say anything about his stress to anyone, and the symptoms grew worse to the point where he became almost non-functional, Hawkins Donovan recalls.
By the time he walked into her office, the man exhibited the classic symptoms of burnout. His energy level was so low he could hardly respond. He was in despair and wholly incapable of making decisions.
In the midst of his despair, the executive would drive down to his old South Side neighborhood and sit there, longing for the days when he felt he was still in control of his life, Hawkins Donovan says. The man felt trapped that he had to be with people all day long, both at work and when he got home and stepped into the role of father. This conflicted with his introverted nature.
“People in this situation feel like they are losing it,” Hawkins Donovan says. “But there are so many options for managing stress. The big issue is to stop and decide you are going to do something about it.”
What Hawkins Donovan did was get the executive to take some time away from work, and helped him re-examine his priorities. She had him do simple things to get time alone, such as plant a garden. With her assistance, the man learned to be more discriminating about where he applied his abilities.
“He was giving a crisis-type energy to everything he did at work,” Hawkins Donovan says. “He had a belief system that said he couldn’t say no. He was just madly trying to please everyone else without taking stock of what his own needs were.”
Burnout is reversible, Hawkins Donovan says. The man is back leading the company and doing fine since he made the necessary adjustments.
Great expectations
Mike Tetkoski sees a lot of middle management health-care workers in his job as clinical psychologist at St. Michael Hospital in Milwaukee, and many are there for the same thing:
They’re stressed out.
A combination of too much work, not enough people to do the work, and unreasonably high expectations in today’s corporate environment are leading people to work themselves not only into poor health, but into a mental state in which they feel they have little control.
“Fewer people are doing more work,” Tetkoski says. “But the expectation is that it will be done at the same level and within the same timeframe. So they suffer in silence and work longer hours, hoping that it will all work out in the end.”
This is what Tetkoski calls quantitative stress, the kind that results when there aren’t enough bodies to go around. For people who have been promoted, what might have seemed like a reward now seems like a sentence. They see others going home to their lives while they stay and work into the night. People in this position can start to feel isolated and resentful toward the organization, Tetkoski says.
“At the same time, they think to themselves: ‘I have to justify the company’s faith in me,'” Tetkoski says. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that one. So they decide to work longer, harder hours, because retreating to their old job is not an option.”
According to a study of more than 5,000 Swedish and American men, junior executives are more likely to sustain heart attacks than leaders of companies, Sanderson says. Also, the lower tenth of workers are more likely to develop heart disease than men in the top five percent of companies, suggesting that stress is not confined solely to management ranks, Sanderson says.
The other type of stress Tetkoski sees in his practice is qualitative stress. That results when people who are good at their line-level jobs are promoted into management ranks with little or no training. And they are reluctant to ask for help or training for fear they will be perceived as not being up to the task.
“Just because someone is a good radiologist or staff nurse does not make them a good manager,” Tetkoski says. “This is an entirely different mindset. And the organization is not crazy about providing you with the opportunity or the time to acquire those skills to get you over the hump. And if they do get permission to take a class, their workload remains the same. These people are typically expected to do more work.”
What if the organization is asking you to do budget projections, and you have never done that before? Tetkoski asks. If you are lucky, you may get an experienced manager to walk you through the project. But ultimately, the job you end up doing is slipshod and you are left with the feeling that you are an impostor in this new position, and that you will be fired when your superiors find out, he says.
Some of the business people Tetkoski sees in his practice are business owners of companies with 20 or fewer employees. They started the business because they were particularly good at the necessary skill to get it off the ground, but now they are struggling with the managerial aspect because the company is in its second stage of growth.
“It is at this point that these guys come to me after they’ve hired five new people, and they are further and further removed from what they used to do,” Tetkoski says.
For some owners or managers, it is a matter of loosening up the reins and delegating authority, he says.
“I ask these people to look at their own values,” he says. “I ask them where they see themselves in the workplace, and what niche they can fill. A lot of these people just think they’re along for the ride. So I stop and make them think by showing them that they have control over their own destiny. Some decide that they don’t want to do this anymore. They don’t want to be a manager, or they decide to delegate more.”
Tetkoski knows of several highly respected physicians who are getting out of the practice of medicine because they are sick and tired of the increasing administrative burden.
“My assumption is, they have become so far removed from doing what they want to do – which is practice medicine – that they feel like they can’t turn back the clock,” Tetkoski says. “That’s the sad part. It’s not that people don’t want to do the job. There are obstacles that get in the way, and everyone loses.”
Reclaiming their lives
For the small entrepreneur, stress can be as much of a factor as it is for the lead executives of a large company.
Until early 1997, Rick and Cindy Owings felt like they were living to work in their seven-employee firm, Owings Computer Graphics. There was constant pressure to maintain a sufficient backlog of work in order to keep the employees busy, Rick Owings recalls.
“There were different pressures such as dealing with people’s individual lifestyles, meeting payroll and having to compromise our standards, at times, in order to maintain a necessary volume of work,” says the 39-year-old Owings. “This created a tremendous amount of pressure. We had to spend more time – a lot more time – than we really wanted.
“We really didn’t have a life other than work for about 10 years,” Owings continues. “For the first six years, we worked every Saturday and half of Sunday. We didn’t take vacations. We were putting in 65- to 70-hour weeks. Our 7-year-old daughter was raised in this office. Our social life was virtually non-existent.”
Finally, Owings and his wife began to see the light when several employees left the firm. They noticed a corresponding decrease in pressure. They started taking 10-day vacations to the Caribbean.
“Our blood pressure must drop 30 points when we do that,” Owings says. “I feel like it adds 10 years to our lives.”
About 16 months ago, the last employee left on her own. Now, it’s just Owings, his wife, and a part-time bookkeeper. Their quality of life is better, and they feel as if they are in control.
“I think some people are afraid to admit that it is impossible to do it all – to function at a high level as an executive, to manage the household, be excellent parents, and still have time for friends and family,” Owings says. “I think some people want to give the impression that things are problem-free, that everything is running smoothly.
“They are afraid that if clients, friends or relatives see the bumps in the road, that somehow they may lose credibility with these people,” Owings says.
“I just found that admitting the fact was a big step in the right direction for us. Everyone sets high goals and standards, but there is a price to pay for it. And the price is personal relationships and free time. You just have to draw the line somewhere. You just have to come to the realization that it probably can’t all be done.”
May 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee