Gaco Western Secret Sauce

Friends:

I wrote the 16 Ingredients to the Gaco Western Secret Sauce in Sicily, where Susan and I sunned, beached, pooled, vinoed and pastaed to our hearts’ delight. In all of that there was a lot of time to revisit my time at Gaco, in particular the last ten years. I will forever cherish my time at the Gaco helm. There is no doubt our employees gave me more than I could ever conjure up for them. I will always remember the faces, the laughter, eye-to-eye contact and joy inherent in the Gaco Western blood stream. It is important to understand that the 16 Ingredients was a ten year journey of grit, obsession and clarity of purpose. “I know I can, I know I can,I know I can.”This was not a light switch.

Obviously, the next question is what good does it do anyone else, given the personal nature of this obsessive leadership? I guess that is up to you. There might be some wisdom here. Given the painful days, there better be. I hope you might take some nuggets from this and use it as it fits your unique skill set, goals and priorities. Be well, be safe and stay true to yourself. And, most important, thank you to Susan and Anthony for their wisdom and support.

The secret sauce at Gaco is not a secret. The 16 ingredients below were pilfered from 20 years of Vistage membership, listening and learning from the fabulous minds at Gaco, and the book, “Good to Great,” which we gave to all new employees. Gaco Western was a family-owned, second-generation-led, building products manufacturer, founded in 1955 by my father. I took over in 1994, when the company was worth less than nothing. How does a small company succeed when your only strategy was to lower your prices? You do not. My father had retired 17 years earlier and left a hugely profitable, specification- driven, company to return to the public sector, his real love. The intervening leadership destroyed almost everything in a few years. So in 1994, I took over a bankrupt-in-every-way mess: no money, no morale, no strategy, and a real disregard for chemical safety regulations. UGH, four times.

In 2017, 23 years later, Gaco was led by a deeply rooted passion for winning in every way, and a devotion to the “Gaco Revolution Family” that was the heart and soul of the company. This was a 23-year transformation of a beast into a beauty. I am told the transformation is amazing and the ingredients we used need to be shared, so here goes.

Before I begin, it is critical to give credit where credit is due. Gaco’s Executive Team has truly delivered the bacon, been prepared to perfection, and delivered on time for the last 10 years. They did the day-to-day, painstaking, front line work to transform this company into the unique, amazing culture. While we are awarding recognition, all the employees, throughout the company, enlisted and gave 200% to creating the Beauty of 2017. They each deserve more than a standing ovation.

The following, in an abbreviated form, are the 16 key ingredients that grew a $15 million struggling dysfunctional mess to something valued at 20 times that in a decade or so, in the building products industry, no less. Consider this a teaser, for each of the sixteen could be a chapter unto itself. That feels overwhelming, which I don’t need right now. This is in bullet form, my favorite means for email and written communication, as all of Gaco knows.

– Peter Davis, Retired Chairman and CEO of Gaco Western