OneSource isn’t a perfect company, but president Rich Kissane would like to see how close it can get — a quality that endears him to current customers and challenges his employees.

A product of numerous acquisitions and leadership changes during the 1990s, the $850 million OneSource, formerly known as ISS International Service Systems, has endured some bumpy transitions. But since Kissane came on board as an upper-level executive in 1998 and then took over the corporate presidency in early 2000, he has worked to provide a stronger focus for the contract cleaning company.

“Our competitors had the opportunity to slay us when we were wounded, but we’re not wounded anymore and so they better watch out,” says chairman of the board Eddie Turner, of how strong the company has become in the short time Kissane has been president.

But the last year hasn’t been a cake-walk for the new executive, who had to quickly learn the intricacies of a new industry while simultaneously giving the company a new identity.

“It wasn’t easy coming into a position where people had been in and out too fast to make an impact,” says Kissane. “But the No. 1 thing I wanted to do when I came into this position was to prove that I could bring consistency and follow through on my promises and demands.”

And in a short time, he seems to have made good on a lot of his early promises. Even before Kissane became OneSource’s corporate president, he already had a hand in many major decisions, such as the company’s name change and moving the corporate offices.

Other initiatives Kissane has led include reorganizing the company into new divisions; creating a management incentive program; expanding the sales force from five to 50 people; creating a national sales team; starting a specialty services group; kicking off a franchising division and spending about $4 million to upgrade technology in the corporate service center and in field operations. On top of that, Kissane has started a number of quality assurance initiatives, including completed ISO 9002 certification, a corporate training department and an employee advisory council that meets two to three times a year.

All this has helped the company, which is owned by Carlisle Holdings Group, to solidify its position as one of the largest janitorial providers in the U.S., with roughly 42,000 employees serving about 10,000 customers in 38 states.

But getting the company on a steady course isn’t enough for Kissane. He also wants to move full-steam ahead into expansion. While competitors, such as San Francisco-based American Building Maintenance, have their sights set on international expansion, Kissane is content to grow domestically.

“One thing I have yet to see a CEO or president in the industry discuss is the fact that we are in a $65 billion industry and no one has more than 2 percent of the market share,” he says. “Our goal is to capture more of that market share than anyone else.”

He also hopes to break $1 billion in revenues this year. After all, his company is publicly held, and his new initiatives have to produce higher profits for shareholders to be as happy about his changes as his customers are.

Kissane plans to make that mark by continuing to perform strategic acquisitions, adding specialty services that could interest current janitorial customers, and expanding the company’s national accounts, with consistent service as a major selling point.

Follow-through
Kissane believes that standardization is important because “when you have 40,000 people go to work in different buildings every night, you’re going to make some mistakes.” That’s why the last line of the company’s corporate culture statement — another new development under Kissane — says, “We support a passion for zero defects.”

One way this is put into practice is a company-wide inspection program that involves all of the company’s managers, even Kissane. Each division or project manager is required to meet with their customers on a regular basis for an inspection review. After those meetings, the managers must notify Kissane, who then sends a personal letter to that customer. This policy is one way Kissane tries to impress upon employees the importance of their relationships with customers.

“It doesn’t matter what widget you sell; it’s basically the same principles in place regarding how you treat the customers,” says Kissane. “You need to take care of customers and employees.

What makes Kissane’s follow-up letters most unique is that he doesn’t just treat them as a formality. When he writes that customers should feel free to contact him directly if there is a problem, he means it.

Southwest Airlines executive Jim Malone took Kissane up on that offer and found out that he is willing to put his money where his mouth is. Malone, who is a national contract management buyer, called Kissane to talk about cleaning problems at one of the company’s locations.

“I was ready to stop their growth with our company until that branch was fixed, and I would have written them off if he hadn’t sent that letter and then responded so quickly to my phone call,” says Malone. “You don’t define a company by their mistakes as much as by how they fix those mistakes.”

Not only was Malone satisfied with Kissane’s response, but he has since used that incident as the springboard for giving OneSource most of another, larger vendor’s business with his company.

The right person for the job
To understand how a company can do so much in so little time, with a leader who has no experience in the industry, you have to understand the man behind the initiatives. Kissane is a straightforward, creative leader, qualities which have helped him carve out a career as a corporate-growth and turnaround man.

Prior to joining OneSource, Kissane helped revitalize AlphaGraphics — a U.S. printing franchise that had been operating in the red for about 5 years prior to his taking over as president and CEO. Other companies where Kissane has left his mark include Wendy’s International, Sylvan Learning Centers and Xerox.

Probably more telling than his accomplishments at each of these companies is the fact that when Kissane moved to OneSource, some of his former colleagues followed him. Tom Camplese, president of franchising, came from Alphagraphics; and Debra Loss, senior vice president of operations for the Southeast, came from Sylvan Learning Centers, as did Charlotte Bentley, director of quality training and engineering.

“His leadership is very participative,” says Camplese of Kissane. “Rich will get you involved in his vision and will work with you every step of the way in terms of supporting and helping you reach that vision. At the same time, he gives you the freedom and flexibility to manage the job you’re responsible for.”

And OneSource veterans, who might have had the most difficulty adapting to yet another executive, and one with no janitorial industry experience, have equal admiration for their new leader.

“My initial reservation was that he did not know our industry,” says Charles Allio, division president of Western region operations, and an 11-year veteran at the company. “But I have to say he’s a quick study and he has instituted many new guidelines that actually have revitalized the company.

“He’s turned OneSource around through better efficiencies — looking into and staying on top of costs, centralized purchasing with certain large items. It’s lots of things that, quite frankly, seem easy to do but were not implemented before,” Allio adds.
Kissane also has impressed others in the industry, including Bill Carpenter, president of Doyle Building Services, Rochester, N.Y., who recently sold to OneSource after entertaining various other offers.

“I had my reservations about going from a privately held company to a billion-dollar corporation, but Rich Kissane won me over by proving that the same values of treating customers and employees well were going to drive OneSource as they did Doyle,” says Carpenter, now a vice president of operations. “Kissane has a very simple mission statement, and that is: ‘We are a please and thank you business.”

Taking care of your assets
That strong focus on customer and employee support is another change under Kissane.

“We used to treat the janitorial industry the same way we’d been treating it for the last 20 years, but [Kissane] made us start thinking about what makes us succeed in the business — our people, our customers and the relationship we have with both of them.” says Allio. “In essence, our motto has become ‘don’t take them for granted and when we have them, don’t let them go.’”

Kissane says the biggest lesson he learned when working with Dave Thomas, owner of the fast-food chain Wendy’s, is that if you take care of employees, they’ll take care of your customers.

“Dave wanted to spend more time with the fry cook in the kitchen than he did with the manager of the store he visited,” adds Kissane. “That’s why I always talk to the cleaners, because they’re the people that really know what’s going on.”

This philosophy manifests itself in a variety of ways at OneSource. Kissane commissioned an employee survey, from which he culled a lot of helpful feedback for his managers on how they work with their staffs.

Kissane also has the employee newsletter sent to people’s homes so they have more time to read it. And he holds regular employee meetings off-site for idea generation, stating that they are the only way any leader can keep in touch with a business.

When discussing the importance of communication, Kissane advises BSCs that they must take action after they receive advice from employees. “I think you’d have to be crazy to not follow through after your employees have given you their advice,” he says. “What’s wrong with a lot of businesses today is that they don’t finish what they started and employees react to those empty promises.”

Balancing focus and fun
Another of Kissane’s strong beliefs is that if you’re going to push people to work hard, that you have to give them the tools to get their jobs done right. Enter the Franklin Covey time-management system, which involves a day planner that helps keep track of and prioritize daily tasks.

Every manager in the company receives training about the system and Kissane’s planner is the focal point on his own desk. One of the biggest benefits of the system is that it helps people prioritize so they can spend time on the big issues, such as planning (No. 1 on his planner’s priority list, regardless of which day you flip to) and not on the small fires that often crop up and take up too much time, says Kissane.

“Anything I can do to help employees get a better grasp on their time means they’ll spend more of it with our customers,” he says.

Another aspect of the Covey system that Kissane likes is the attention to balance between work and personal time. Kissane admits that sometimes he can get caught up in a flurry of new ideas and that he’s had to learn how to temper that fast pace so that he doesn’t push workers to the breaking point. So, in addition to time management, he also tries to make sure that the time spent at work is fun.

There is evidence of this tendency all over Kissane’s office. A golfing gumball machine, humorous books and a collection of Boppits — stuffed toys that blurt out funny phrases — keep his office from looking too serious. And no one ever knows when Kissane will pull out one of his toys and toss it across the room during a management meeting to lighten the mood. Not to mention the fact that every now and then corporate employees will arrive at work to find an ice cream sundae buffet or a free massage therapist waiting for them.

When asked what Kissane hopes people would say when asked why they like working with him, he says, “That they like my honestly, integrity, follow-through on initiatives, and that I like to have fun.”

After talking to a variety of OneSource employees, it seems that is exactly what people are saying about their new leader. And at the rate OneSource is expanding, those qualities are just what the company needs to avoid losing it’s newfound identity in the shuffle.




POSTED ON: 2/1/2001