Immediately after I rejoined Lyon-Raymond Corp. as a returning veteran in 1946, my father named me “assistant to the president.” One of my best friends, Stan Bryant, was sales manager, the job I’d held before enlisting. Assisting my father wasn’t a well-defined job; I did anything he asked me to. I was a “gofer”—perhaps a glorified one, but still a “gofer.” No problem; I loved having a job in the company, living in my own house with Cynnie. Just being a civilian again was wonderful. Everyone’s sleeves were rolled up, none higher than mine.
Usually the rewards were great, but there were disappointments and setbacks. In the spring of 1947, my father, Stan Bryant and I boarded a train in Binghamton. We were headed for the Material Handling Show in Cleveland, with my mother along for the trip.
As far as trade shows go, this one was the biggie. It ran for a full week and was attended by manufacturers and their dealers and agents, plus customers and dealers from around the world. Stan and I set up the Lyon-Raymond booth and worked in it from early morning to well into the evening, and then we took people out for dinner and drinks.
As usual in our industry, this event was a very “liquid” affair, and it was a rare night that ended before 3 a.m. For the most part, Stan and I joined in, seeing it as our job to make sure our clients and potential customers enjoyed themselves. To remain aloof would have been poor business. Plus it was good fun, if tiring.
By 6 p.m. on Friday, Stan and I were exhausted. We had packed up and tagged the booth and the displays and everything we’d brought with us from the factory, ready to ship. All we could think of was the comfort of that train ride home.
The station was directly beneath the Hotel Cleveland, where the company had booked a top-floor suite for the entire week—my parents in one bedroom and Stan and I in the other—and we went up to pack. Instead of finding my mother and father having a quiet drink, we walked in on my father, my mother and our Cincinnati dealer talking in the living room. We said very little because the dealer, a great old friend of my father, was plastered. Finally, my dad skilfully talked the dealer into leaving and actually helped him over to the elevator. There was no way he would have made it on his own.
Stan and I sighed with relief. Now we could have a nice talk with my parents and get my father’s views on how the show had gone. But when my father came back into the living room he was upset. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that we should have been nicer to the drunken dealer, should have joined in the conversation instead of letting my father carry it by himself, and definitely should have helped my father walk the man to the elevator.
Stan and I were stunned. But my dad wasn’t through. He continued ripping into us, laying us out in lavender, and finished, “You’re both fired!”
I was shocked. Here we’d just finished working the longest week we’d ever worked, had given 110% to the company, and because we didn’t humor some drunk dealer we were fired? I was so angry and hurt that I went directly to my room, where I threw my suitcase together, went downstairs, checked out, and got on the train.
Tossing my bag in my roomette, I headed for the club car, where I ordered two double Manhattans. The train wasn’t scheduled to leave for another hour and 20 minutes, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to sit there alone, mull over what had just occurred, and figure out what I was going to do next.
I was working on my second Manhattan when who should come along but Stan, a big grin plastered on his face.
“What are you smiling about?” I asked sourly.
“I just got re-hired—with a raise!”
Now I was really mad. I polished off my second drink and went to bed. I walked into my office the next morning and started clearing out my desk. I took pictures and plaques—and my framed share of Lyon-Raymond stock—off the walls. I was just about finished when my father walked in. “What in hell are you doing?” he said.
I said, “Well, you fired me, so I’m leaving.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re not fired. Get to work.”
I waited for him to say something else, along the lines that had made Stan so happy; but he never did.
I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t enjoy working for my father or that he was some kind of cold-hearted dictator. He was an autocrat nonpareil, but he wasn’t mean or vindictive. He simply liked running the show, the entire show. Lyon-Raymond was his baby.
The outside manager
If I hadn’t bumped into George Brockway in Cleveland, my journey on the path of modern management would have been delayed or might never have begun.
What a dynamo he was! After I became president, he’d breeze into my office, I’d close the door and we’d talk. I’d sift through his ideas to get to the best ones, then we’d open my door and call all the top managers together and tell them what the company was going to do, the new direction it would be taking, how we’d handle this situation or that.
Well, they didn’t take to it one bit. But they didn’t tell me they disapproved; instead, they told my father. They did this secretly, but my father responded by calling me and saying he had named this group—that is, all the company officers who reported to me—as the Administrative Committee. Further, he had given it veto power over my, and George Brockway’s, ideas.
I eventually learned that what bothered my father the most was that George and I would make all our plans with the door to my office closed. Doing this, I was quick to see, was a mistake. Quite understandably, suspicions that Brockway was “influencing” George Jr. abounded, and these distorted views were passed on to my dad. In a few words, he was not happy with “the George Brockway situation,” while I thought George was a great addition to the company. Something had to give, and I saw my first boardroom “shootout” looming on the horizon.
To everyone’s surprise, my father enjoyed a Florida vacation so much that he bought a place of his own and started spending winters in the Sunshine State. But he always came up to vote in local and national elections, and for meetings of the board of directors.
At one such board meeting in 1957 he made the trip as usual and—characteristically bold and to the point—informed me that his first order of business would be to get rid of George Brockway. My father walked into the board meeting and, without even calling it to order, said, “We have to fire George Brockway. All in favor signify your vote by…”
“Wait a minute, Dad,” I said. “Let’s discuss this first.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “there’s nothing to discuss.”
“I’d like to speak.”
He told me to go ahead, and I came to George’s defense. He was a great thinker with many innovative ideas, I said. The company was running better, our production was increasing, and we had tighter control of inventory. Plus sales were increasing: $5 million in 1955, $7.9 million last year, and this year we were headed for our best year yet. Brockway was partly responsible for this growth.
The instant I finished, my father said, “OK, now vote.”
Because I, not he, was responsible for the three non-family members on our board, and because, as board members, they were familiar with Brockway’s excellent work in the company, I fully expected they would side with me. To my astonishment, they sided with my father, and by a vote of five to one, with chief engineer Chris Gibson abstaining, George Brockway was gone.
I was so angry I didn’t trust myself to stay in the room, and stormed off to the men’s room. One of the directors followed me in—Tom Wilson, CEO and president of the Marine Midland Bank of Binghamton. Tom was one of my father’s best friends, a mentor to me and one of my personal heroes.
“I suppose your first question,” Tom said, “is why did three outsiders vote with your dad and not with you?”
“It sure as hell is!”
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “There are a number of family businesses in Binghamton. I’m on the boards of most of them, and I’ve saved several from going on the rocks. The trouble usually starts with a fight between father and son or brother against brother. Look, I heard your presentation, and it was clear you held the trumps. But if we had voted against your father, it would have split you and him right down the middle, and the company as well. He would never have gotten over it. He’s too old, but you’re not. You’re plenty young enough to get over it—and I suggest you start doing that right now.”
He paused for a moment, laid a hand on my arm. “There are a 1ot of people out there who are just as good, as talented, as George Brockway. I suggest you start looking.”
Fortunately, I had enough sense to listen to Tom Wilson and to take his advice. As for the relationship between my father and me, there was no damage done because he was never one to hold a grudge. As soon as he walked out of the board meeting, he’d forgotten it all. And me? I went back to my office and worked. George Brockway landed on his feet as a successful consultant, and he and I remained close friends until the day he died.
I’ll never forget how helpful Tom Wilson was that day in giving me an important insight into a family business. It’s often the outsider who has the best view.
A foolproof formula
A board of directors, well chosen, is a fountain of knowledge; much is to be gained if one is open to learning. One of the most interesting and worthwhile things I picked up was Lou Durland’s formula for valuing companies. This was in the 1970s, when we were doing extremely well, and I began getting unsolicited offers to buy Raymond out. I had never thought much about that possibility until then, so during a coffee break at one of our board meetings I asked Lou how to determine the fair asking price of a company.
As the treasurer of Cornell University, he had a great deal of money at his disposal and huge experience in bringing money in and spending it wisely. At the time, he had served on some 40 boards, and every time he went on one he bought enough of that company’s stock so that he—meaning Cornell—owned 10% of the company. Over the years, quite a few of those companies changed hands, and more often than not it was Lou Durland who set—and got—the selling price.
“I’ll give a foolproof formula on how to do it,” he said, and I knew he was speaking as one who knows. “If a company has had five years of increasing sales and profits, then take its anticipated sales volume for the coming year, and that’s the price.”
Not long after we’d held that discussion, I didn’t hesitate when a friend of mine, Carl Sirriani, who owned a company that made “animal enclosures”—i.e., stainless-steel cages—asked me what price he should ask for his company. He gave me his figures and, in a matter of minutes, I told him.
“I’ll never get that much!” he exclaimed.
“If you don’t, you’ll still have the company,” I replied. “So what do you have to lose?”
He agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to ask for that price. His buyer jumped at the offer.
Firing my oldest friend
The Breakers Hotel, Palm Beach, Fla., 1973. We were just beginning a three-day directors’ meeting, and Bob Bass and I were walking on the beach the first day after lunch. Suddenly he said, “You’re worried about something, George.”
“I am.”
“Personal or business?”
“Business.”
“Employee?”
I nodded.
He said, “It’s Stan Bryant.”
“How did you know?”
“That’s why you’ve got directors. It’s our business to know. What’s the problem?”
“Sales managers have to do more than glad-hand,” I said. “I mean, he’s great at that. But there’s more to the job than greeting customers at the door.”
“You’re thinking of firing him, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I just don’t know how to go about it. He’s my oldest friend in the company.”
Bob suggested we raise the topic at the board meeting. So I brought it up that same day, and the recommendation wasn’t surprising: Stan Bryant had to go.
My inclination was to let him down easily, to talk over his performance in a gentlemanly way. After all, I’d hired him as my replacement as sales manager when I went into the Army during World War II. In 1946, when I came back, he left the company to go with our Chicago dealer, probably because he knew sales was my job and, in all likelihood, I’d get it back. Seven years later, by then the president, I rehired Stan as sales manager, and he had been with the company ever since.
It all boiled down to this: I had to fire him, but I still wasn’t sure how.
Dick Beckhard, who had never been on the board but frequently attended meetings, was with us in Palm Beach that weekend. At the meeting he said, “George, there’s only one way to do it.”
“Keep talking,” I said.
“First thing when you get back to Greene, call Stan in and tell him he’s not doing his job and has 24 hours to gather up his stuff.”
“Just like that?”
“If your mind’s made up, there’s no point getting into a discussion. Nothing that Stan can say will change your mind. I know it’ll be hard because you’re good friends, with his wife also, but that’s what you’ve got to do.”
And it’s what I did. Stan looked at me for a moment, in shock, then said, “Can I say something?”
“No. You’re gone.”
And with that he stood up and stormed out of my office. I gave him a generous severance package, and he went to work with one of our dealers in North Carolina. From time to time through the years Stan would come to Greene on business, and we’d see each other professionally: two men in the lift-truck industry. But then one day he walked into my office and said, “George, I’ve buried the hatchet.”
We shook hands, old friends once again.
“How’s Eleanor?” I asked. She had flat-out refused to speak to me since I’d fired Stan.
“Give it a little more time,” Stan said; and sure enough, he was right.
It’s often said of CEOs that they have the board in their pocket, that the directors are nothing more than a rubber stamp. I never felt that way. I always listened to what my board said, and I took what they said seriously. It’s why we met six times a year. Each meeting was a virtual seminar in business administration and human dynamics, with everyone present both teacher and student.
Excerpted from All in the Family … Business (Posterity Press, Chevy Chase, Md.). George G. Raymond Jr. was CEO of the Raymond Corporation, Greene, N.Y., from 1959 to 1987. The firm, a leading manufacturer of electric warehouse trucks, was founded by his father in 1922 and is now owned by Toyota. George Raymond Jr. is also founder of the George and Robin Raymond Family Business Institute at Alfred University, Alfred, N.Y.