An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen is cutting too deep to the point that you hurt your employees or customers in the interest of making more money. Doing this hurts the long term of the business and these short term decisions create unbalance in the company.
Mark P. Frissora is a successful businessman who was previously the Chief Executive Officer and President of Caesars Entertainment and served as the chair and CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, Hertz Global Holdings, and Tenneco, Inc. With over 42 years of business experience, Mr. Frissora’s expertise spans across all levels of managerial and functional roles. He is known especially for consistently generating stakeholder/shareholder value at highly leveraged companies in both private equity and public markets, and successfully leading companies out of bankruptcy. Mr. Frissora credits his success to a strong work culture that focuses on customer-centricity, diversity, and employee engagement.
Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started off at General Electric in 1978 as a marketing associate, and later as a group project manager. During my time there I learned a lot about marketing, brand management, and sales.
Next, I went to Philips Lighting Company, which at the time had bought Westinghouse light bulbs, and they were trying to establish their brand. The general manager of North America for General Electric was now at Phillips, I was recruited by him as the Director of Marketing to start growing share with the new Philips brand.
My next role, I became a vice president of marketing and sales at a company called Aeroquip/Vickers, and I spent five years there learning quality disciplines. For instance, I became both a master black belt and lean sensei after going through different training curricula to be certified in both. During my time at Aeroquip/Vickers, the training I received in lean sigma allowed me to see the tremendous waste that exists in all businesses.
I ultimately took that skillset with me to Tenneco and over the next three years, I was able to demonstrate very good performance in the factories that I had in North America. After about three years at Tenneco, I became the CEO in 1999. I spent six and a half years in that role and under my leadership, we set many records. Some of those awards include; the top shareholder pick for three years in a row, as chosen by PWC and the Gabelli Automotive Symposium.
After Tenneco, I was recruited to Hertz, where I spent a total of eight years there as the company’s Chairman and CEO. During my time there we experienced a challenging recession — around 2008, 2009. Shortly after I got there, Hertz was highly leveraged and we were breaching bank covenants. I was pleasantly surprised by how willing everyone was to make sacrifices to turn the company around. On my team, we all cut our salaries, cut our 401ks…we did everything we could to cut costs. One year later we were able to restore every employee benefit that we cut.
Hertz was able to pick right back up where we left off. We started hitting all kinds of benchmark records in customer and employee satisfaction. I left in 2014 to go to Caesars as their new CEO, one week after they filed for bankruptcy. So of course, I had to face that issue head-on. I spent four and a half years there and was blessed with a great team and we worked our way out of bankruptcy in two and a half years. During the bankruptcy we established new financial records which improved our margins on the Las Vegas strip from last to first.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I’ve always championed empowering work teams, giving people accountability and responsibility. Most teams can usually run with it, and they appreciate it in the long run. So, at Tenneco, we had manufacturing plants and they had a concept called self-directed work teams.
That was intended to eliminate supervisors and management and allow employees to manage themselves.
Personally, I was excited by the concept. I took a Ford exhaust plant that was based in Smithville, Tennessee, and trained the employees to be self-directed. We spent some money with outside consultants and the entire process took about two and a half months to get everyone trained and set up.
When we went live with it, we felt pretty good about the planning process we implemented. We thought, at the time, that we had done everything by the book — but within three months we lost our Q1 flag.
Frankly, the whole idea turned out to be a disaster — our quality rating was in the garbage. We had to take eight months to get our quality rating back and, and ended up learning some valuable lessons along the way.
In the end I think it’s important to realize that not everyone can be self-directed, and you can’t expect employees that haven’t spent their life wanting to be or training to be self-directed to just be able to do that. Sometimes there’s a reason that you have to have supervision and management. Most people think that’s for oversight purposes, but it also helps to reinforce structure in the workplace. The bottom line was, we expected too much. I think all the employees were trained well. But in terms of being able to completely self-police, we simply had too high of expectations.
We did learn a lot and inevitably improved from that experience and were able to selectively put management where we knew it needed to be.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Well, I was an only child growing up, but my father was extremely attentive. He always wanted the absolute best for me, and he’d brag about me all the time through grade school. I was really lucky in that sense he gave me lots of positive reinforcement.
Unfortunately, he passed away when I was only 12 years old. For me, when my father died it was like my best friend died, so it goes without saying that this was an extremely tough time for me but I was able to use some of the things that he taught me to get through that difficult time. Although I was very young at the time of his passing, the lessons learned every day in my life with him were extremely impactful. Those lessons continue to inspire me, still to this day.
He had a poem that he brought home one day, called “Don’t Quit,” by John Greenleaf Whittier. In short, the poem just says to never stop — to never quit, to never stop trying even when you think things won’t work out the way you intended them to. If you continue to plow through whatever challenging time you’re facing, eventually, you’ll get through it.
Jack Welch was a good mentor to me at General Electric as well, I was a true student of his. I had him visit as a guest speaker a couple of times at Hertz, to talk to our management team, and he received standing ovations almost every time he’d visit.
Every time he spoke, it was like you instantly understood that he was a very real person. In fact, I learned about being real, if you will, with him…through him. Like getting down to the transaction level of the business, making sure that you get real with the people that are working for you, and more importantly, that you don’t just inspire — let’s say, the top 10 people in the company. You inspire everyone, so you have to engage and make people believe in your vision, no matter what it may be, all the way down in the ranks.
If you were with Jack, he was present and he gave you his undivided attention. So that was something that I certainly aspired to take from him and have tried to implement throughout my career. It was part of the culture training which Larry Senn used with the concept “be here now”.
Larry really helped me do a culture change in all three companies I worked with, so Tenneco, Hertz, and Caesars. From there, we developed the phrase, “Be here now.” This phrase was established to remind others not to be distracted — to be here presently. Nowadays everyone’s constantly looking at their phone, distracted during meetings. I think we could all use that phrase in our society, now more than ever, because of all of the distractions the internet offers.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
I co-founded an app called Goodwrx. It’s an app that connects unions, workers — anyone, looking for a job, really to a job anywhere by matching the candidate to the job. Right now the Vegas Strip has a lot of job openings and we’re loading 30,000 workers into our technology. Then we connect those workers with casinos like MGM and Caesars. The idea or the overarching goal of this app is to get people back to work. It’s a tough environment for people right now, especially with COVID, and they are having a really difficult time finding just one job and holding that job. Goodwrx mobile application additionally helps people who need extra money, and this allows you to work an extra shift or take on more than one job.
Goodwrx provides added value to people by providing them with a broad range of job opportunities, flexibility — and it’s efficient, so we really hit a hole-in-one with the development of this app.
At the same time, throughout my career, I’ve had to prioritize adding value over everything else — which makes a company successful. Furthermore, by monitoring and constantly checking the way we hire, and the way we administrate ourselves, we’re able to achieve equality for all as a central theme of the company. This allows us to have an aspirational purpose for contributing to Goodwrx.
Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
I led two teams through two different recessions. At Tenneco, in 1999 we were going through a global recession. Quite literally six months after I got assigned as CEO, the recession started — and I realized those business effects right away. Truck production, for example, went way down 70%.
Because production was suffering, we required “an all hands on deck” approach. We got the whole team together and figured out what we could do to cut down on costs so we could make payroll. I was flying to New York City every week working with three or four banks who wanted us to sell our facilities to liquidate any debt we had with these banks. They pound on you, so you have to convince them that you need another lifeline — that you need an extension to work through this. And I did pretty much that every week for about three months. Our company came out on the other side without having to sell anything and we were able to keep our plants open. I learned the value of making payroll, and how essentially look at every single expense item, look at your payables, and how long it takes to pay your suppliers.
Evidently the same thing was true for me at Hertz. We went through the prices of the big financial recession, the likes of which we’ve never seen since the big crash in ’09. Again, we saw a remarkable team effort come from this. All of the employees contributed, and again we were able to come out of the other side of a dark situation and really build something positive out of that experience. We were able to restore all of the things we took away, almost immediately after we were in the clear again.
And again, coming out of that situation — we were able to start hitting high customer satisfaction, high employee satisfaction numbers again and went on to continue earning awards for these achievements. This wasn’t even surprising — if you think of it, going through that experience together creates a bond, even within a big company like Hertz. Handling those situations with optimism and positivity really helps raise everyone’s spirits and by doing just that, you have more employees willing to contribute to a bigger picture. Even if it involves big sacrifices, like budget cuts. When we were able to get our funding back and our productivity levels up to speed, we were able to perform at a much higher level, compared to companies that never went through anything similar.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
People say I’m relentless and I try to face new challenges head-on. We all go through tough times, I know I have had a lot of them in my career. All three companies that I was CEO of were all highly debt leveraged. Naturally, I didn’t have a lot of money to invest in new projects, but I enjoyed the challenge. For me, the bigger the challenge, the more exciting it was.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
I think staying positive, not allowing the organization or you to feel sorry for yourself. So that means, making sure that your team sees your positive energy, patting people on the back, reinforcing the good, getting rid of the bad. I’d say don’t be critical, even with people having issues. In my experience, working with people in a positive way by praising all of their accomplishments and only suggesting ways for that individual to be more effective, has been a successful way to lead.
Bottom line, leaders have to lead and they cast a big shadow. That’s why we have this concept called, “the shadow of the leader,” and the shadow of the leader casts a wide shadow that affects everyone under them with their decisions and processes. This applies to the majority of higher-up leaders, whether it’s the CEO or vice president. Any senior person needs to be leading with optimism and positivity to encourage the rest of the team from the top — all the way down to the bottom.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Leaders can start with the most obvious, and maybe important, aspect — improving communication. Ensuring that leaders are communicating with each other, with their teams, frequently.
For instance, I used to do a monthly webcast when things were tough. They were live so you were able to ask questions in real-time. I created a video set-up situation where I’d be in a conference room or at a headquarters facility. Then we’d have 300 people there in the room — plus all the locations would dial in — and in the webcast, I would talk about everything going on in the company. I’d try to really focus on highlighting positive events, and then I’d have a Q&A session where anyone in the webcast could ask me any question. That was a good, transparent format for improving morale.
Another example of this was implementing an employee suggestion box, so employees would be able to suggest ideas and then they would get rewarded for any suggestions that positively impacted the company’s performance. By engaging the employees and rewarding them with this idea, they truly began to feel more and more like valuable members of a family, or a team. Also, taking care of your employees and giving back to them when you have those means is incredibly important to keep in mind. Again, employees want to feel valued, secure and cared for — they want to be seen and heard.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
With your team, there should be an existing element of trust that you have with each other. Working with a team demands transparency, so you just need to be honest with them right away. Nine times out of ten, they’ll appreciate that upfront honesty because nobody likes wasting their time.
If you’re in a CEO or leadership position, again — leading with optimism and positivity is incredibly important. Let people know, upfront, yes your company is in a dark place — that is a reality. However, let them know there’s a light at the end of that tunnel by preparing a call to action, a 30–60–90 day plan. Whatever it may be.
Delivering bad news to customers is a whole different ball game, because we assume the customer is always right. From a marketing standpoint, we’ve always tried to sort out the positives and then reinforce them by emphasizing what our brand, our company has done for the customer and what we can continue to do for them in the future.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
Teaching your organization to be flexible and adaptable to an ever changing environment allows them to thrive in an unpredictable world.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times? And 14 are very similar, asked and answered above
Going back to the principles my father instilled in me from a very young age, I would say to never give up. If you fall, get back up and always try harder. In my experience, people that are considered to be relentless in their pursuits, are oftentimes are considered to be people that have grit. People that have grit are pretty much always successful.
Years ago, I listened to a podcast where the guest was a lady who had studied leadership across the board. So she focused on studying all these successful people that had been extraordinarily successful their entire career, and what she found in her study was grit. All of these people had grit — they believed in the principle of never giving up and always continuing to push through whatever life throws at them.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that? — cut to 2
One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen is cutting too deep to the point that you hurt your employees or customers in the interest of making more money. Doing this hurts the long term of the business and these short term decisions create unbalance in the company.
Next common mistake is cutting employee benefits and making employees upset with certain management actions. Employees should be on your side and as a leader, you must always think of the implications of your actions. If leadership doesn’t have their employees on their side, the business will fail. I strongly encourage company leadership to stay positive during hard times and encourage your employees to do the same.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
I believe it is important for CEOs to find a balance between growth and efficiency during turbulent times. Company leaders should never try to swing completely one way or the other by focusing only on growth during this period or only on efficiency. There are always opportunities to grow and work more efficiently but the ideal situation is finding the balance between the two.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’m very fond of the quote, “where there’s a will there’s a way” and have focused on that saying my entire life. I consider myself a person with grit who never gives up and always tries my hardest to stay positive when I’m faced with adversity. That is part of the reason I put so much emphasis on staying positive in leadership roles because a fighting spirit always seems to win if you remain positive. I think my attitude is part of the reason I’ve been successful in CEO positions because being the head of a company comes with many tough assignments and responsibilities but I am a relentless fighter and power through the tough times.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Mark Frissora: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
