By: Frank Kasnick
President & CEO
INDEPENDENT WELDING DISTRIBUTORS COOPERATIVE
One day while growing up in Ashland, Kentucky, my father came home from work and gathered our family around our kitchen table to make an announcement. “Kids, I have decided to change jobs and we will be moving to Iran.” Knowing my brother, sister and I would have no idea where that was my mom grabbed our globe, spun in around and pointed it out for us. The adventure was on!
By the age of twelve, we had moved from El Paso, Texas, after my father was discharged from the US Army to Pennsylvania to Kentucky then on to Ahwaz, Iran. After living several years in Iran, my siblings and I were sent back to the U.S. to boarding school for a year around the time of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Thankfully, our parents evacuated safely and rejoined us stateside. We then moved to a new town and new school for our junior year of high school, making it the third school in three years that we had to acclimate to.
I reflect on these formative years to seek answers to why change comes so easy for me. I think my experience is analogous to children who grow up in an environment where multiple languages are spoken.
For the rest of their lives, they possess a strong language aptitude, effortlessly learning their next language. In my case instead of language, I developed the ability to read and connect with people. Frequently adapting to new communities, schools, friends, sports teams, climates, cultures and geographies honed my social and networking skills.
After graduating college earning a chemical engineering degree, I went overseas into the oil sector working for the Flopetrol division of Schlumberger, a multinational oilfield services provider. In 1985 they hired an international class of engineers, two of us from the U.S. and then the balance in Europe, Africa, and Middle East. We worked on wildcat drilling rigs and were trained to open new reservoirs to measure oil and natural gas potential. In my first year out of school I was working primarily in the North Sea stationed in England, Holland and then France. I was sent out on two-to-three-week assignments, a new place every time ranging from a pasture in England to the largest semi-submersible drilling platform in the world at that time off the shore of Scotland. Needless to say, I think this first career role leaned heavily on my nomadic upraising.
Then, big career change number one hit. As you know, the oil industry is cyclical and in 1986 it crashed. Our entire class was sent back to their home countries, many of us laid off. I was due to report back to a unit in Houston, Texas, and as I was waiting for that to materialize, I started searching for my next job. So, lesson one: take action, do not wait for something to happen. That Houston opportunity never panned out as exploration rigs are the first to stack up during downturns. I would have never pivoted to my next opportunity if I had sat around waiting. Lesson two: use all resources you can when faced with a challenge. In this case, I went back to my alma mater, Pennsylvania State University and took advantage of their alumni career resource center. That led me to the chemicals industry where a majority of my career has been focused.
I joined Union Carbide as a technical sales representative based in New Jersey and ended up working with them for a decade. It was by far the most formative part of my career in terms of learning about business, leadership and receiving mentoring. I came on board shortly after their tragic chemical leak in Bhopal, India, resulted in over 2,000 deaths. Union Carbide never recovered and was acquired by Dow Chemical in 2001. As I think about that part of my career emerges lesson three: change management is a process. In this case, it was all about company survival, but the five principles apply just the same:
- Prepare for organization change (Union Carbide shifted its focus to its core basic chemicals business and sold its leading consumer products brands: Eveready® batteries, Glad® bags, Prestone® antifreeze)
- Craft a vision and plan for change (Union Carbide led an industry changing “Responsible Care” initiative)
- Implement changes (Union Carbide made divestments as noted in 1, and then made investments in large scale chemical complexes like EQUATE in the Middle East and OPTIMAL in Malaysia)
- Imbed them in culture (through townhall conversations and employee review processes)
- Review and analyze results (by conducting internal and external benchmarking)
During this stage of my career, I learned lesson four: you are in charge of your career, the company you work for is not. I decided to pursue a company sponsored MBA and after earning that degree I reached out to a mentor and expressed interest in marketing & business management. Up until that point of my career I had been a field engineer and sales professional. Recently married, my wife Martie and I relocated to Connecticut where I worked at Union Carbide’s corporate headquarters in Danbury. This move was a career springboard to a progression of commercial leadership positions.
Wanting a change from basic commodity chemicals we left Connecticut with two small children for a commercial development role at Castrol Industrial, an entrepreneurial metalworking fluids company headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois. For the first few years, Castrol was an autonomous North American unit of Burmah Castrol but eventually it was gobbled up by British Petroleum (BP) driven primarily by BP’s interest in Castrol’s consumer motor oil brand. BP was an interesting company and taught me lesson five: when pursuing change management, do not take your eye off core business fundamentals. BP was very progressive and aspirational as evidenced by their early stance on equality and inclusion and their focus on renewable energy. BP rebranded their logo to the now iconic sunflower called the Helios, who was the Greek god of the Sun. Then came their oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico where basic maintenance and operational excellence were rightfully called into question. It should never be an “either or”, rather it should be an “and”.
During my time at Castrol / BP I had a mentor who eventually reported to me prior to his retirement. He taught me lesson six: step away from the day to day, go somewhere, hole up and think deeply about your career, life, family and goals. He called that a personal retreat. My personal retreat camping trip led me to my current industry – the industrial gas & welding business.
From the retreat I concluded I wanted to try out a privately owned enterprise. Our family uprooted with three young kids and relocated to South Bend, Indiana, headquarter of a growing, dynamic large regional independent distributor, Mittler Supply Company. As an outsider to this specialized industry, I was drinking through a fire hose at first. Luckily, we had many team members who knew the facets of the business which allowed me to focus on helping the company formalize their structure and go to market growth strategies.
This led to creating the “Mittler Way” which defined our culture and operating procedures and the “Mittler Difference” which sharpened and articulated our value propositions. Unbeknownst to me at the time, emerged lesson seven: show up, stay in the present and give every project or task your professional best. While at Mittler Supply I was asked to serve on a committee charted by a cooperative we were a member of. I became chair of that committee and must have made a good impression because that led to an opportunity five years later which I will come back to. My privately owned business stint was a brief few years as Mittler Supply ended up selling to Praxair, a large multinational corporation.
At Praxair our family had to move again, back to greater Chicagoland, where I was based out of their Burr Ridge, Illinois, complex. Working for our industry’s leading company I saw how a first-class safety culture drove focus and leveraged scale and best practices. I gained more appreciation for process, planning and discipline. Then my phone rang again which led to perhaps my final career and family move.
Based on my prior committee leadership while at Mittler Supply, I was recommended to an individual leading the search for the president & CEO role at the Independent Welding Distributors Cooperative. And, so here I am, privileged to lead the largest group in our industry, IWDC, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
But to lead means someone is following – how does that happen? Not by title alone. A strong leader is a change agent, able to convey direction, pace, and helping staff to grow along the way. At the core, this is all about business growth as all good things come from growth: pride, industry buzz, dynamic work environment, job opportunities and progression for staff. What might increase your chances to become a successful leader? In addition to business acumen and industry knowledge, leadership success hinges on key behaviors and traits – lesson eight.
Show through consistent communication and action that you care about the staff and the mission. Lead by example, pick the appropriate time to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Build trust with your employees, industry partners and customers by always acting with integrity. Limit making assumptions and instead relentlessly consume data, trends and facts. Press yourself to keep asking “what could go wrong?”, “how can we improve?”, “what could change?” and “why do customer buy from us versus competitors?” Searching for answers to those questions will keep your edge and avoid mental laziness and coasting.
Thank you XO Leaders for allowing me to share my career adventure, catalyzed early on by a globe spin!
