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INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | AUGUST 20, 2001 FACTORY DAYS By Lisa Bergson The Part of Me in MEECO Mirror, Mirror on the boardroom wall, does my company reflect it's owner's personality -- and will VCs see that as an asset or liability?
Having just started a second business, it seems like a good time to assess my personal impact on MEECO, a 53-year-old manufacturer of industrial equipment. I worry if mine is the right profile to shape my new startup, Tiger Optics, a pioneer in the emerging field of electro-optic equipment and components for industrial-process control, semiconductor fabrication, environmental monitoring, and medical diagnostics. Moving into my third decade of management, I continue to view MEECO as my father's business. Near bankrupt when I took over, it was a reflection of his personality, both good and bad. A reclusive, eccentric physicist, he designed analytical instruments that were technically elegant, extremely accurate, and so durable we still have units from the '60s come in for repair. "When I train new reps, I tell them there's only one tool they need: a sledgehammer," jokes Borys Mychajliw, our national sales director. (The sales force really does complain that the equipment lasts too long.) MOOD SWING. On the other hand, my father was messy, disorganized, unwilling to delegate, and clinically paranoid. All these unfortunate traits manifested in the business. It was dark, squalid, and rundown, with no management other than my father. His need to control every facet of the company, down to calculating each employee's weekly timecard, stunted MEECO's growth. A terrible waste, but it was his to squander. Under my management, some common traits prevail -- MEECO remains an anomaly in our industry, an idiosyncratic and very private business sustained mainly by its ability to innovate advanced technology. Although I'm not a scientist or an engineer, I seem to have inherited my father's knack for spotting, developing, and marketing new ideas. I truly enjoy helping scientists succeed where my father unfortunately failed. Under me, however, the company has been transformed in many ways. It is warm, cheerful, neat, task-oriented, and fairly well organized. There is much emphasis on strategic planning, with systematic tactics all spelled out to achieve our objectives. Annual 1- and 3-year planning sessions find our library walls covered by poster sheets, with multi-colored A, B, and C goals. Frequently buffeted by the violent cycles endemic to the semiconductor industry, my staff and I have learned to quickly adapt and to maneuver to survive. Since I'm not the most unbiased observer in this regard, I asked a couple of my top execs to characterize MEECO's personality. Not all the adjectives they used were ones you would typically ascribe to a business. "Dynamic, challenge-oriented, fearless, vivacious, bubbly...old, but young at heart," were their terms. "Definitely a pulse here," said one. (True, MEECO and I are both getting on.) "Energetic" and "fearless" kept coming up: "We're willing to take on very big competitors, like David going after Goliath, with our sling and our rock." BRINGING UP BABY. I agree, MEECO thrives on challenge and pressure, dancing at the edge. Maybe this is why I don't lose sleep over the fact that money-losing Tiger is introducing its first electro-optic devices into a semiconductor market plagued by layoffs and capital-spending reductions. After all, a slowdown is the perfect time for Tiger to test new equipment. As my father used to say, "My baby doll always sees the silver lining." Similarly, my employees tend to be both optimistic -- and masters of brinkmanship. For 17 years, they've done what it takes to make MEECO consistently profitable. At the very last moment, a small team salvaged what looked to be a lost cause and made fiscal 2001 -- despite the industry downturn -- our best year ever. And when all the experts said Tiger's brand of electro-optic technology could never be commercialized, least of all by us, well, we went ahead and did it anyway. So is mine the right business model for Tiger Optics? In the startup phase, perhaps. It's a bold, exuberant, but intrinsically disciplined approach -- girded by manufacturing standards, scientific strictures, and clear-cut objectives. But I'm just not sure my optimistic, adaptable, and highly personal style lends itself to the kind of dynamic growth and aggressive management investors expect -- assuming Tiger garners the venture capital needed to rapidly expand. In that case, the VCs may demand more professional, "businesslike" leadership. I need to gird myself for the possibility that I just might have to let go. It's a tiger, after all -- not a puppy.  Lisa Bergson is President and CEO of both MEECO and Tiger Optics. Before joining MEECO in 1983, Lisa Bergson worked as a business journalist at BusinessWeek and freelanced for many business publications. You can visit her companies web sites at www.meeco.com or www.tigeroptics.com, or contact her at lbergson@meeco.com. Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | AUGUST |
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