Dave LaGrand, President and CEO of NORDYNE, has a simple-but-effective leadership philosophy. He shared this and other thoughts with publisher Terry Tanker recently.
I like German cars and have driven BMWs for a long time. I also have a 1995 Porsche 911.
I have. It was two days in class and on track at the Porsche Driving Experience. My instructor was Hurley Haywood, who has had a lot of professional success racing Porsches around the world.
A 1967 Camaro. I wish I still had it.
I grew up in Michigan, received my MBA in marketing from Michigan State University, and was recruited into Ford’s Parts and Service Division. I went through their executive training program and was with them for six years. Following that, I was recruited by York when they were owned by Borg-Warner, to help improve their parts business.
Create alignment with employees with clearly defined values, standards, and beliefs. Communicate often and clearly. Establish goals, monitor progress, and adjust as necessary.
Before hiring our key managers, we put them through a rigorous testing and interviewing process. We feel very confident that once the process is complete, the results will show if we have a great fit — or not. Those individuals are empowered to “manage.” We look outside of our industry as well; we try to learn and adapt good business and management techniques from others who have similar manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and sales channels.
Share your goals and objectives and find individuals who “buy in” and want to help you get there. Make everyone feel like they are part of the team and important to your success. Give them an opportunity to grow, and reward success.
We are extremely open to new ideas and willing to try to be different. We look at technologies used in other industries that we can apply in ours. We hire people who are bold enough to suggest new ways of thinking and problem-solving. When you have people who are willing to push the envelope, that type of thinking spreads throughout the culture.
There are some things I can’t mention for competitive reasons, but we’re very excited about the heat pump version of our iQ Drive® air conditioner. Preliminary testing rates it at up to 22 SEER, making it the most efficient air-source heat pump available. We expect to have it in the market by the end of May.
We’ve launched the NORDYNE Interactive Network, a Web-based venue that allows us to share technical training demonstrations and announcements with our customers. On that same network, we’re also launching online business training for dealers. Through a series of on-demand videos, our dealers can receive the business training they want on a schedule that fits their workload and life.
For contractors, we have a dealer extranet for marketing materials and the NORDYNE Interactive Network for training. Distributors can access a private NORDYNE site for news, sales bulletins and product updates. We also use the NORDYNE Interactive Network for product presentations and updates.
I think our three most significant milestones were:
NORDYNE’s core values haven’t changed. We sum it up in two words: Genuine Value. For the past 90 years, we’ve worked to provide outstanding product performance, innovation, and responsive customer support — all at a fair price to create genuine value for our customers.
It’s an exciting time as the industry globalizes further, and we design products incorporating new materials and technologies. There will be a lot of innovation to talk about. Technology will play a much more significant role, specifically with regard to monitoring and tracking system performance. Energy costs are going to continue to rise as will minimum efficiency regulations, which are very likely to be implemented in regions instead of nationally.
We’ve made many proactive changes at NORDYNE to stay lean and operate in the most efficient way possible. We’ve suspended some employee benefits and have cut back on travel, tradeshows, and advertising spending. Our employees have all stepped up and are doing the work of a much larger team.
We should see our markets start to recover beginning in mid-2010 and hopefully have some tailwinds as industry volume improves beyond that.
I believe it’s enough of an incentive to shift demand from products that consumers might otherwise purchase to systems that are more efficient and eligible for the tax credit.
I’d love to see something that saves energy in big way and helps the industry at the same time. One idea that we keep coming back to is a way to incentivize the replacement of installed older residential equipment. We like the idea of an opportunity for buyers of existing homes to include a system upgrade in their mortgage. In many cases we believe the extra mortgage amount would be entirely offset by lower operating costs.
Same answer! Everybody wins. The country saves a lot of energy. Consumers save on utilities and repair costs; contractors, distributors, and manufacturers enjoy additional volume and help create more jobs.
Yes, surviving it makes you tougher and a better competitor. On the other side of this recession (or depression for our industry), we’ll see pent-up demand for new and used housing drive renewed growth for our industry.
Micromanagement is a prevalent issue in many workplaces, yet few are willing to openly address it.
They discussed how to introduce students, educators and parents to the plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical trades. And how contractors, distributors and manufacturers can support the effort.
Keith Ouimette, Chief Operating Officer at Cardinal Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, one of our Tops In Trucks Fleet Design Contest winners. The two discussed fleet …
An in-depth explanation of all that goes into choosing a good fleet design and how we choose the winners.
Terry and Gene discuss family businesses, bucket lists, preparing for business every day and upcoming industry trends, challenges and opportunities.