Interview with Neil Gambow, November 23rd, 2017

LaMaster: "Okay. Hi. My name is Linnie LaMaster, and I am interviewing my grandfather Neil Gambow. And he is going to be talking about his leadership positions at Kelso and also at Rotary International and other things. So to start off, would you briefly describe your positions at Kelso and then what the company does?"

Gambow: "Sure, well Kelso technology is a manufacturing company that designs, manufactures, and certifies and sells products including valuing to railroad tank car industry. So we make technical products and these products are actually made to meet various regulations in the industry. When I started with Kelso nine years ago or ten years ago now, I came in as the president and it was a very very small company. I was at the president's position for about eight years and then I moved on to the chief operating officer position. In that position you actually are a member of the board of directors. The position itself is one where you manage all the functions that are considered what I call company operations, which includes: manufacturing, procurement, quality assurance, Human Resources, sales, engineering, and marketing. Jus the.. and accounting of course. So it's all the functions that allow a company to operate. It does not involve things like managing the stock price and all that sort of thing."

LaMaster: "So what was the story behind the start of Kelso? And how did you guys or what were the first steps of turning the idea into a multimillion dollar company?"

Gambow: "Okay. Actually the product was actually brought into the marketplace in 2001, and I was actually working for a competitor of Kelso at the time. And at the time when Kelso brought the product out, I knew it was a pretty good product, but they really did not know how to bring the product to market. Move the clock forward about seven years, and I had left that other competitor and about a year later a friend of mine gave me a call and invited me to dinner. I said that'd be fine so I went to dinner with him, and at the end of dinner he popped the question. He said, 'if I'd consider going to work for Kelso?" I said yes because I knew the product was very good, it was way ahead of the industry at the time and really needed to come to the market place. So for the first two years we spent our time, it was just myself and an engineer, and we spent our time going about the industry trying to sell the product and increase the credibility of the product in the market place. That went on for a couple of years and frankly we were about six weeks from going bankrupt when a source of capital came into the company. Then we were allowed to pay off all the overdue bills and think about building the company up to be able to handle the kind of demand we thought might be coming at us. Our first person that we hired was a salesman and put him in the field. I backed off the sales part of it and went ahead and started to work on building internal organization to try and keep up with what looked like the demand. There were a couple of regulatory changes about four years into our efforts and suddenly our products became very very attractive because they were, they definitely met the new requirements and they were the latest technology. So what did we start doing? We started hiring more people. We hired some production people because we were actually doing the work in a garage which was you know pretty pretty impressive then. As we had to grow our volume of the business we had to hire more people in the production end and we had to get a little more sophisticated with our procurement because we couldn't just go out and buy things piece by piece, we had to buy ahead to meet these demands. We did we put in a various robust insurance program because we had to do it in order to meet the regulatory requirements of the industry. Well as this thing grew we decided we had to rent some more space and as soon as we did that we were out of space again. In 2014 sorry 2013, we decided we were going to have to build a brand new building in order to meet the requirements of the industry. When we built that building, we build a first class facility, we didn't take any shortcuts. So we got into the building and we got up to about 50 people that were working in that building and the rest of the business in terms of sales and marketing and everything. We were really moving along and then the industry to a very severe down turn due to changes in the requirements for shipping goods in tank cars and they were specifically related to crude oil. We had to win the business back, fortunately we owned the plant so we didn't have to owe anybody. So we wined it back and we took the business back down probably about 2/3s which was you know a pretty significant drop. We still had a good position in the industry, also during that time we were inventing new products. A lot of new products in this industry were products that were being used for application were very old designs. We took the step of saying if we can't improve the design or the functionality of these parts in a step change, which means you know a big change in performance than we weren't gonna do it. So a lot of the products that we developed at that time had just started to come on to the market when the market slowed down as it did. So we got to a point where you know it looked like I wasn't going to be able to add a lot more value to the business as they kinda struggled with the slow down. We elected not to renew my contract which was fine because I had told them three years prior to that it was probably going to happen. I left the company at the end of last year."

LaMaster: "So you talked about what the process was like for growing Kelso but how specifically did you motivate and organize the people that you worked with or your coworkers?"

Gambow: "Well motivation is funny. In companies when you start one from scratch, everyone you hire you pay attention to. You want to know that you are hiring the best person. The one that has the most energy, the one that has the desire to do the kind of work and to do the kind of job that you are looking at. As you as you begin to build your organization it's like playing chess. You know, you are trying to say , well I need a position over here. I got this job that people are doing, this one person is doing I gotta split it into two now, how am I gonna allocate the resources to be able to do that. But as you bring people on in an organization you're not only growing the number of people and of course you are growing a culture. You really want that culture to reflect the leader and cultures reflect leaders don't ever forget that. If you are an active leader and you do a lot of things that people look to as a leader, they are going to respond to that. So when you bring people on you look for the kind of people that number 1 are going to fit your culture, which means you know and our culture was very collaborative, very friends, and we also told the people that we hire "we want you a part of the family, we don't want you to be just an employee". As you build a company, the thing that I always told people is whatever you do we are gonna do it first class. We are not gonna cheat, we are not gonna shortcut the regulations, we are not gonna do anything like that. We are going to be looked at as a company that did it right the first time. If you do it right the first time, you don't have to spend the money doing it again. So as we moved this thing forward, we kept doing it the right the first time and not only do the people respect that because they say hey we are really investing in it. A lot of that investment in doing it right the first time is training people right. Actually taking the time to train them. The other part of this leadership that is equally as important, not only look at leadership in the company but look at leadership in the outside world you are serving, in other words your customer base. In this particular instance, with the rain being so heavily regulated, the regulatory side. You had to be looked at as a leader in all of those areas. As we grew the company, sure I was no longer the chief engineer, chief cook, and bottle washer. I was out in the field talking to customers, but I wasn't the salesman, I was the person that brought the credibility of the product, the credibility of the company to the industry. When you build a culture it's really interesting you know because people respond to culture. If you have got a culture of distrust or if you've got a culture where people just put their heads down and do a job and don't help create a better culture in the company, that's what you'll get. But if you have a company where you are asking for input from the employees, you are treating them with respect, making them feel welcome in the industry. They will respond without a doubt, so when we grew the company we just looked for people like that. We were very particular of who we hired and you know we made sure that above all they were nice people. If they weren't nice people, we didn't hire them. So that's kinda how we grew the organization, but the other part is just making sure the chess board was filled in properly with people in the right spots. (9:36)

LaMaster: "So, what would you say you learned about being an effective leader? What was the biggest thing that you learned   from your experience at Kelso?"

Gambow: "Well leadership is as I say, it's not a science or an art, it's both. The science, everybody writes a book on leadership. There is thousands of them out there. I don't care what recipe you want, it's out there somewhere. But when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of leadership, what I have found is being a visible leader. Be around. Be visible. Walk around the plant. I lived in Chicago, the plant was in Texas. Well I was down there every month."

LaMaster: "And in Canada right?"

Gambow: "Pardon"

LaMaster: "Wasn't there another plant in Canada?"

Gambow: "No that was our corporate office. Just strictly the Texas operation. This is where we did all our work, and I made sure I was down there every month. Make sure I could walk through the floor, meet the new employees because at that time we were hiring them. Talk to them a little bit, go around and meet the rest of them because one of the things that would have really played a significant role is that I knew their names. You know when I'd walk up and say, "Hey Linnie how's it going? How'd your kid do in the finals he was in last" you know but be visible. Being as visible as a leader as we were, we would bring people in for employee meetings and you would tell them what was going on on the market place. They are gonna, they are producing stuff that goes out the door and they don't know anything about it after that. But you fill in the blanks, you keep them educated, you keep them engaged in that particular way. If you look at leadership outside of the company, and again when you are leading a company you're not just doing the stuff inside, you are doing the stuff outside. You're in some cases the chief salesman, you are out there all the time. A leader out there is are you a head of the game? Do you understand how the market is behaving? Do you listen to a customer or a company representative? When he tells you about something are you listening? Another thing about leadership is don't cut a problem. If you get a problem, fix it. Don't sit there are hope it goes away; they generally don't unless you make them go away. The other part in this particular industry and again this is particular to the rain industry, you must participate in the regulatory activities. The people that either make the laws or enforce them. If you are out there and you are trying to bring your products to the market, and they are solving the products that the regulars see. They will look at you as a leader. You sign up for a committee or too, you do some volunteer work because that's all volunteer. You get three leadership aspects. A leadership in the company to make sure everybody is working on the same things you want them to be working on. A leadership in the industry, that you are really representing your company in that industry, and in case of Kelso the leadership in the regulatory arena."

LaMaster: "You also are in charge of the youth exchange program, the Rotary Youth Exchange program in Evanston which is run by all volunteers. Will you talk about the difference in being a leader of volunteers in like that kind of service organization and leading a for profit company that has a plan? Those are very different positions, but would you say are similarities, differences?"

Gambow: "Well one of the biggest differences is that the people working within a for profit institution are working for a profit. They get paid to do the job. Volunteers have a whole different motivation. The volunteers are doing something because their heart is in it or they feel motivated to make the world a better place but they are not driving by a pay structure or a hierarchy . So when you look at they you have to say, you really gotta convince people that you're doing, that you are going to pull this particular project in the write direction. You've got to really do a lot of hard work convincing them. Let's face it, if you are running a for profit organization in the end the buck stops with you. You are ultimately responsible for the decisions. When you are in a non for profit arena well the buck is probably not going to stop with you. Maybe it does on the project but you've got a carry of people that have other things to do. You've gotta make sure that what you are doing with that non for profit is high enough on their radar screen that they will actually do the job. That is communication. That's, you hate to say it, that's having meeting. One thing I do in meeting is a respect their time. We have a one hour meeting and at the end of one hour we are done. They respect that, they also respect that they better be on time because they will miss the first part of the meeting. You have to understand the motivation on the one side in the non for profit arena is more qualitative. Whereas the motivation on the for profit side might be a little more quantitative. When you look at Rotary. Rotary is a large large organization. You've got the corporate structure of Rotary International and things done at the club level. I elected to stay at the club level. I choose to do this youth exchange thing because I saw my granddaughter go through that process and come back a world citizen. I felt, I said, we need to do that and if we can do that with one or two kids a year that's good for us because we are creating something for this world. Is it going to change the world? Well it might, but is it going to have an impact? Yes it will. That's the kind of thing that makes it worthwhile. When you do it you have to sign up and now don't sign off, you have to sign up. If you don't want to do it, then tell someone that you don't but be honest about that."

LaMaster: "How would you define leadership and what kind of leader do you try to be?"

Gambow: "Well again you know a lot of people look. The leadership and the news these days are a lot of leadership are you know people that are reprehensible on a lot of cases. They are demanding, they don't take the time to understand their people, they don't take the time to understand who they are dealing with. They tend to be rather autocratic. I tend to be far more consultative. In the sense that if you can't get the people in your organization rowing in the same direction then you aren't gonna go where you wanna go. The leadership again is being visible to them, making sure they understand that they are accountable. It's not that they are responsible, because hopefully you hired all responsible people but they are accountable. So that we they say they are going to do sometime or you assign them to do something, they are accountable for that. When you convince people as a leader that you'll respect that accountability, that the accountability really matter to what's going on and you are generally a nice person about it. One of the things that I've never done. Once in a great while, I will raise my voice very loudly in front of somebody but but If you do it every hour everybody looks at you like "oh here he comes again, I'm gonna get chewed out for no reason". If you treat your people with respect and every once in awhile you raise your voice, it has a much bigger impact. They know that they have disappointed you in some way"

LaMaster:"And that goes back to the culture"

Gambow: "It goes back to the culture, it goes absolutely back to the culture. So I did raise my voice rarely but when I did it was very much respected. Ultimately you can't be a pushover. I've worked for people who have been pushovers. Anything you want to do "oh sure sure no problem." Even though they knew that you were dead wrong. And you know you want to be firm. If you said you are going to do something, hold them accountable. Don't get mad at them just say "hey it's due tomorrow are you gonna make it?" and if they say "no because of this" say let's talk and get it organized. But don't yell at them, I think yelling is something that I learned a long time ago is something you do very carefully and very sparingly. Other things that you learn as a leader is that your culture is going to emulate you as a leader. All of your personality traits make a difference. For instance, if I like walking around and talking to people. Everyone knew that if I was coming to the plant than I was going to be out on the floor, and they all knew that I wanted that place spotless. I would come in and say "this is looking great, will it look like this in an hour after I leave? It better." Create that expectation. I never had to worry about a customer coming into that plant and finding it dirty because those employees knew not only that it was important to me but why it was important.  If you are a nice person and you're a firm person well that's what happens in the rest of the company. If you hired people that are nice people, people you don't mind being in the same room with, they will behave like you. You won't get a yeller. If you get a yeller then you maybe you gotta another issue going on. Just remember as a leader, no matter whether if you're a leader in a non for profit, you're a leader a project for you , whatever you're leading in. Know that the people that are in that organization are going to emulate you. If you're really a ball of fire and really wanna get this done, the other balls of fire will are rise to the surface. Some of the people may not like it and they'll kinda wash themselves out, but what you try to do as a leader is to really bring people to their most potential. You asked me about another one and I'll mention. This is about leadership outside, not only just outside Rotary. I was telling you about the rebuilding warehouse."

LaMaster: "Yes which is interesting because my class that I'm recording this for went on a field trip for a bakery/ they make hand soaps and those kinds of things that hire all women right out of prison. And so it's the same kind of idea. You can talk about your experience working"

Gambow: "Its called work force training"

LaMaster: "Yeah so we visited one"

Gambow: "About in March after a friend of mine continued to encourage me to go work at Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse. This is an organization whose mission is to keep materials from houses and buildings being torn down, keep those materials out of the junk yards out of the trash yards. And also train felons and give them a new opportunity in the world. Give them a skill which is deconstructing buildings. Lots of people can build a building but very few people know how to take it part a save the stuff that's in it. In our neighborhood there are lots of old buildings, hundred year old buildings where the stuff you might think is just junk but these people are taught to go in, take the fire places out, pull up the flooring, and save all this stuff. Then they bring it all into the warehouse and sell it. When I went to go there I thought I would be volunteering as someone in the warehouse because I know how to organize warehouse. I got talking to the executive director and she was telling me that she had told her board of directors the year prior that she wanted to retire at the end of this year, and there was no plan for her to do so. [She asked,] "would I help her do so?" I agreed, I know how to do that. I know how to do succession planning. We sat down for 2 1/2 months every couple weeks like a three hours session. Tell me about where you think the organization is gonna go, tell me about what the organization looks like, tell me about how you get the felons to come into the business, how do you sell your good. I just let her talk and I kept listening, and we finally said okay look. We need to say, if you look at your organization well I know we need someone there and we need someone there. I said okay let's move the chess pieces on the board a little bit. Maybe we got some people that we aren't utilizing properly, maybe they got some skills. Sure enough we started talking about Mary and Joe and Frank."

LaMaster: "Within the company?"

Gambow: "Within the organization. I said well you know, "Mary she is trained to do this and I don't know why I don't have her doing this." The executive director was doing payroll and all this other stuff. We said well let's re-figure the organization a little bit, move the chess pieces around to take advantage of people that maybe aren't being utilized fully. So we did that and after we did that we said okay "what are the big challenges that the next executive director needs to deal with. The current executive director was a contractor, so she knew how to build houses and recover all this stuff. Not recycle it, that's the wrong word but recover it."

LaMaster: "So you can reuse it in the same way."

Gambow: "And reuse it. She did that and then this other model of workforce training was her idea so we said well that workforce training thing, that's a whole different thing than selling this stuff in the warehouse so let's split that up. We created, well then we said the next executive director well that next person doesn't need to be a contractor. We got a contractor, people already know that job. We need an executive director that can take this organization to another level. They got about a million dollar budget now. That a pretty sizable budget for a non-for-profit. And I kept telling her, you are on the edge of something new so we finally after much discussion came up with a job description and then add to put out on the market for a new executive director. We took that to her board of directors and they were thrilled that number one, at least had a plan. And then number two, thrilled that it was really a well thought out one. So we went through the process of getting resumes and just very recently we got the last two. We have selected and I think as of probably today we have a wonderful women who fit the role. She was not the kind of person that would start the organization but she is the kind of person that can move it. It was so interesting to watch how this all evolved, not only with her the executive director, but with her board. Her board was not an experienced board, I've been on a non for profit board for a long time so I know how that works. They understood a lot more about it, you just don't get a chance to help an organization like that. I will probably stay along as an assistant to the board, and see how this new person's moves this thing over. Actually I'll be sitting with the executive director putting the transition plan on paper because now we know who is gonna take over for her. We are gonna sit down and do that, it's all about planning and all about organizational understanding. One question I asked her and I've done this to a couple other people, I asked them "does your organization really work the way you think it does?" Everybody has got one on paper like oh this is how it is. that's not how it works. I guarantee you if it's on paper that is not how it works. Then you start talking to them and they finally say, "you're right that's not how the decisions are made here." Then you say "let's move the pieces around a little bit." I've done it a couple times in my consulting career a while ago. Reorganizing, moving the chess pieces around. That's part of a leadership thing because that board looked to me to lead this thing."

LaMaster: "What is the hardest and easiest part about being a leader?"

Gambow: "The hardest thing about being a leader is dealing with someone who is not living up to expectations. And maybe it's not because of them being bad people but them may be in the wrong job or they just can't do where you want to go. Then being able to ask them to leave the company or leave the enterprise. That is the hardest thing, for a real leader that is one of the hardest things you can possibly do. Say "hey you're not the right person of us." When you do it you walk away, I've had many instances where other employees say "well what took you so long" and that kind of thing, but that's are for me. For me on of the easiest ones is communicating with employees, walking around, talking to them. Same with the customers, I love visiting with them, talking to them, selling the company's skills and capabilities, and working in the regulatory arena. The regulatory arena, that's all volunteer work.  A leader in that gets to make the rules so this is one of the jobs in our particular company, Kelso, that leader had to be leading those committees that developed the new laws. Sure you can be a benefit to your company, but the other part of that is if you're moving that and if you're making the industry safer, you're making the world safer. That's what your work should be doing. Easy part, that participatory thing. Hard part, firing somebody."

LaMaster: "What would you say, we talked about this in my class a lot, the difference between leader and someone in power. A lot of times they go hand in hand but sometimes they can be very different. Sometimes there can be very powerful people who are not good leaders and there can be good leaders who do not have a lot of power. What do you have to say about that?"

Gambow: "Again leadership is getting people to do the job without having to force them. There are powerful people that are horrible leaders but they use the power as a weapon as opposed to a leadership is a skill to get something moving. Power can be abused. Leadership, it maybe not be good, it may be leadership that might be lacking in some areas but it's generally trying to move something forward without having to use a hammer. Power. I always looked at power as something that is bestowed upon you by the people that work for you. Leadership is something, a skill that you bring to the party. Lord knows that when you are leading a company, you do have power but you should never use is as a weapon. You should always just ask it and not demand it.

LaMaster: "And lastly what advice do you have to future leaders, you can talk to college student, talk to people, because you work with future entrepreneurs. Do you wanna talk about that?"

Gambow: "I was thinking about college students when they are coming up through their education. There are all these opportunities to do things extracurricular. A college student that goes to class, does all the work and that's all they do. They graduate, they are never going to be a leader. A leader takes chances, a leader gets into something, and says hey I need to do something over here. And takes that on as a challenge, you automatically at that point assume leadership. Whether you like it or not. Or you get into a room and you got six people and they all want to do the job, but who wants to chair this thing? And everybody is looking around, a leader says "You know I think I can make this work but you are all going to have to help me." I would say that for college students, get into something extracurricular that you have a feeling for. That you actually like, and do something with it. Do something! leaders do things, leaders don't let things happen. They make things happen."

LaMaster: "You mentioned how the most important thing is passion, or one of the most."

Gambow: "You ask kids..everybody wants to be an entrepreneur.  I've used this several times in an engineering class at Northwestern. You sit that group of engineers down and say, "well how many want to entrepreneurs?" Hell most of them raise their hand. Then you look at them and the next question is, "well how many of you want be salesmen?" maybe one hand might go up. then you explain to them, if you are going to be an entrepreneur you have to be able to sell your ideas so you are going to have to be a salesman. "How many of you want to be a financial wizard." No hands go up and I say you are all going to have to learn how to be a financial person. You are going to have to learn and understand it. So then you ask them, "well what, if you got all that, what is the one thing you need to be an entrepreneurial success?" You get comments like "I need a great idea", "I need some people to give me money", "I need a place to do it". And I tell them you are all wrong, everyone of you are wrong. You need passion. if you don't have passion, you don't have the energy to stick it out. I can tell you right now. If you are an entrepreneur starting up a little enterprise, you will starve for the first two years. But you'll stick with it, and ask yourself "why am I doing this..I know why I'm doing this."  Just keep pounding at it, but have the passion. If you can develop passion for something in your undergraduate work and you act on that passion. Even if it is just doing a small project for one of your extracurriculars, that develops leadership. Leadership is about decision making, I know people say "just make any decision and even if it's wrong." Okay that that sounds good, its probably not the best thing but make a decision. Sometimes you got all the data, sometimes you don't. Good judgement is part of leadership, means that you have got some kind of foundation on the inside of you that leads you to a decision that more than likely is the right one. If it's the wrong one, I tell people it's not that you got into trouble, it's how you got out of it. That's the magic, how did you get out of it. Leadership, take the chance. Do something. don't sit there and be passive."

LaMaster: "Okay any last comments about leadership or anything you've learned?"

Gambow: "Well leadership forty years ago was a whole lot different than it is now."

LaMaster: "You were an engineering major correct?"

Gambow: "I was an engineering major with no leadership training. Other than I just went ahead and did it. I knew I has social skills, and engineer with social skills get a lot farther ahead than an engineer with no social skills, but you know today's leadership is much more collaborative. Forty years ago when I entered the workforce, no such thing. You did your job, kept your head down, and made sure that you didn't goof up. I was pretty good at that, not great, but pretty good. But, today its collaboration. Leadership in some of these organizations, you never see the people that you're leading. They are remote. A whole different skill set. That skill set said yes, you have to be demanding. Yes you have to be approachable. Yes you have to be tolerant of people who don't quite get it the first time because they didn't see it face to face. So you have to be a lot more calm. But leadership in the collaborate arena is probably the biggest change that I've seen in leadership in the last forty years."

LaMaster: "Great well thank you!"

Gambow: "You are most welcome."