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Ron Kaplan, the chief executive of Trex, a manufacturer of outdoor decks. Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times
This interview with Ron Kaplan , chief executive of Trex, a manufacturer of outdoor desks, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant .
Q. Early leadership lessons for you?
A. My father and grandfather were both combat veterans, and they spent a lot of time cultivating my understanding of why leaders are chosen and why people respect other people. My father taught me that the No. 1 job of a leader is to make the staff feel secure.
One way you do that is to carry yourself a certain way — you’re serious, you get things done, people can rely on you, and your reputation for integrity has to be beyond reproach. These things do soak into your bone marrow. And in my experience, which is pretty consistent with what my parents told me, the world is not necessarily run by geniuses; it’s run by people you can count on.
I also noticed that people would come to me for advice in high school and college. I had no credentials. But I dispensed my thoughts by asking them questions. Nine times out of 10, they’d come up with their own answer, but they appreciated the opportunity to talk. To this day, I find I’m most effective as a leader by facilitating other people talking.
I read that you took up marksmanship early on. How did that come about?
My dad was an engineer for Bausch & Lomb, and he designed the scopes that went on rifles, and he would go to matches to watch people use them. I took up the sport when I was 12. By the time I got to college, I made it as far as the finals for the Olympic team.
Any lessons you drew from the experience?
It’s really a head sport. It’s about precision, and your ability to concentrate so hard that you feel your pulse. The challenge is to squeeze the trigger between heartbeats so that the blood in the palm of your hand isn’t moving the gun. You learn how to put everything else out of mind.
What about early management experiences?
I was a controller at a division of the Harsco Corporation that made high-pressure cylinders in a hot-metal plant. The forge was losing a lot of money and market share, and it had an entrenched work force. The chairman came over one day, looked around, pointed a finger at me and said, “Do you want to be general manager?â€
I said yes, but with great trepidation because I didn’t know anything about running a forge. I called my father for advice. He said: “This is like when you get out of West Point, and you’re a young second lieutenant. You get assigned to a new operation. You look for a guy with hash marks all the way up and down his sleeve, and you make that guy your best friend. He’ll tell you what orders to issue.â€
So I found two or three of those guys at the forge, and made them my best friends. I was in my early 30s and they were in their late 50s. They could see I was sincere, and I was very candid about the fact that I didn’t know anything about anything. The only ability I had was that I could analyze things, and I could make things happen. I just surrounded myself with people who really knew what they were doing, but for one reason or another had just never been asked to lead the organization. They told me what we needed to do, and it worked. In 90 days, we got that place turned around and started making money.
How did you know which people to make your allies?
By watching and listening. When people speak, you measure the variance between what they tell you is going to happen and what actually happens. The smaller the variance, the greater the credibility. Also, the longer it takes to answer a simple question, the more I worry. If I ask a guy if it’s raining outside, and he starts to tell me about cloud formations, I know we’ve got an issue.
How has your management style evolved?
I deal much more in matters of judgment than matters of decision making. There’s a big difference. I let my officers make all the decisions. There are very few tactical decisions that I get involved with.
Can you elaborate on the difference?
Decision-making usually is the dissection of facts to come to a conclusion. Coming to a judgment really has to do with the issues of luck, character and probability. If making money were a function of analysis, the whole world would be run by 28-year-old M.B.A.s. But it isn’t. It’s run by men and women who’ve got enough experience and judgment to look at all the facts and the analysis and then sit back and say, “Well, do I feel lucky?†That’s judgment, and that’s hard to find.
How do you hire? What do you ask?
I usually ask basic questions like, “Tell me about your family.†It’s interesting to see how people react to that question. Do they talk about them with some enthusiasm and happiness, or not? I ask them to talk about a difficult point in their career, and to tell me about something they’re particularly proud of, personally and professionally.
If somebody has come in from a different city for the interview, I might say, “Do you want to go out for lunch?†On the way to the parking lot, I hand them my car keys and say, “Why don’t you drive,†and see what kind of reaction they have to driving my car in a strange city. Then I’ll be giving them directions and asking them questions while we’re driving to see if they can multitask. Some people can handle it with aplomb, and others can’t.
By the time the interview’s over, I want to know their character. Do I know this person? Do I have a sense of who they are? If, after 90 minutes with them, they’re not well-defined, and I can’t see the edges, I get uncomfortable. To be a good leader, you’ve got to be predictable. And to be predictable, you’ve got to know the person to a reasonable extent.
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