MGS Machine Corporation
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Volume 15 , No. 4
Past Update issues
July—August 2004
MGS Machine Corporation: Running on bold leadership and
high-level collaboration
by Doug Pond, Associated Financial Group
The president and CEO of MGS Machine
Corporation, Richard Bahr, didn’t mention
“Occam’s Razor” by name, but he showed an
affinity for the famous medieval philosophy.
“Occam’s Razor” says you should “shave off”
needless complexity whenever possible, which
could apply to Bahr’s appearance, his manner,
and possibly his approach to running the
family business.
Company name
•MGS Machine Corporation
Type of business
• Machinery solutions
Corporate headquarters
• Maple Grove, Minnesota
First of all, Bahr is wearing a casual shirt with
Employees
a floral design, in the hope, he says, that it will • 100
“simply make people smile.” He shrugs off any
Years in business
mention of the awards for innovative
• 25
machinery solutions displayed in the
downstairs lobby. The framed letters from
clients praising the company’s outstanding
Website
teamwork—and one letter from Dunwoody
• www.mgsmachine.com
College of Technology saying MGS Machine has
“revolutionized the way packaging is taught”—are “much appreciated, but a little
overblown,” according to Bahr. He cuts to the chase: “We’ve donated to Dunwoody,
helped steer their curriculum, and provided internship opportunities. They are grateful
for our assistance in getting their program off the ground.”
Bahr likes to deflate anything he thinks is overblown, including his own position in the
company. He tells a story about when his youngest son, who’s seven, heard that his
dad is important because he’s a company president. “He just wanted to let me know
that he understood how important I was,” Bahr says. “So I told him about a time when
our receptionist quit during the middle of the day and we didn’t have anybody to
answer the phones. I spent the day figuring out how the system worked.” Bahr asked
his son which position he thought was more important at that moment, the receptionist
or the president?
Aside from his mastery of the phone system and his stint as a receptionist, Bahr doesn’t
like to talk about his individual achievements. Nor does he like to single out others. “In
our all-employee meetings, I almost never include individual names because somebody
is going to be left out,” he says. “There are so many people that impact every single
project. It’s very difficult to have autonomy and be successful here. People who come
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here with a Lone Ranger mentality don’t do well.”
Bahr acknowledges that well-placed praise can improve an employee’s productivity and
morale, but he believes it’s better to discourage selfish expectations. Bahr says they
can weaken the company’s culture and get in the way of the “high-level collaboration”
upon which MGS Machine is built.
Walking a fine line
What Bahr likes to talk about is the work itself. The “Dose Pack,” for example, grew
from an award-winning idea to provide a simple solution to a serious problem. The
client, a pharmaceutical company, needed to package pills for seniors in an easy-open
container—but one that kids couldn’t get into. The conventional pill containers were not
child-resistant. The old push-and-twist bottles, however, were too hard to open for
some elderly consumers.
“It’s a fine line between ‘child proof’ and ‘senior friendly,’” says Lori Marlette, MGS
Machine’s manager of finance, information, and materials. She picks up a sample Dose
Pack to demonstrate. “You press this button and pull out the pills,” she says, as a
“blister pack” slides out of the rectangular carton. “We’re the only company we know of
that has a machinery solution for this.”
Walking the fine line between child proof and senior friendly, the engineers at MGS
Machine discovered, required a carton instead of a bottle—with a release button in an
unlikely place to allow the package to slide open. Bahr says, “The Dose Pack is a good
example of providing a machinery solution with no pre-engineered design. Even though
the package is technically not a carton, the brilliant idea was to adapt a cartoner to do
the job.”
Choosing what not to do
Bahr has an appreciation for the technical expertise that goes into creating a machinery
solution, but he’s not an engineer. His father, Mel Bahr, who founded the company with
two others, started as an engineer. “Now he provides technical support to the sales
staff, goes on sales calls, works on product development,” says the younger Bahr. “He’s
generally known as an expert in our industry, and that can be good for business.”
As president and CEO, Richard Bahr’s role, in a nutshell, is to maintain the business
while both growing and restricting it. Those contradictory forces present a central
challenge to the leadership team at MGS Machine, which includes Bahr, Lori Marlette,
and 15 others.
The “restricting” force, Bahr explains, is: “The idea that in addition to growing the
business, we need to drop things. We have struggled with this in our planning sessions.
It’s really important for a little business like ours to focus—to be very specific about
what we want to do. That always feels risky—it feels risky to pick your customers, your
products, your projects. Because you feel that anything that comes along is an
opportunity, and you don’t want to shut the door on any opportunity.”
What’s the consequence of being too inclusive? “Many companies make the mistake of
thinking of too much of the world as an opportunity, and they never get good at
anything,” he says. “Then all you’re doing is paddling like crazy and still not getting
anywhere. You’re better off to have an intense focus on something. Once you make the
choice, you’ll get good at a certain expertise and you’ll be known for it. Customers will
come back to you because you’re the expert.”
Bahr summarizes his approach to running the business: you either choose the wrong
customer or project, choose right and execute poorly, or choose right and execute well.
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“At least you’ve got a one in three chance,” he says, “which in the major leagues is
pretty decent. If you don’t focus, you’ve got almost a zero chance. I guess I’ll take one
in three.”
Those decisions apply to new business development, but Bahr mentions one other
business decision that is even more difficult than choosing new projects. “In our
leadership meetings, we all want to pick what we want to do, but nobody wants to pick
what we should stop.” Machinery that was built eight or nine years ago, for example,
might still offer a return on investment—but could the time, money, and other
resources be better spent? Making such a tough decision requires bold leadership
qualities, Bahr says, and he believes his leadership team is up to the task.
Can a lack of skills be an advantage?
Bahr affirms many of the theories of Jim Collins and Tom Peters. His leadership team
regularly discusses Collins’ most recent book, Good to Great, and applies the principals
to their business operations.
In fact, Jim Collins advocates the use of a “stop doing” list, which Bahr and his
leadership team maintain on a regular basis, in order to allocate resources
advantageously. As a result, the company has grown since Bahr became president
about eight years ago. To get the business going, Mel Bahr needed a wide range of
skills, Richard Bahr says. “But I don’t have many of those talents,” he adds, “which
actually can be an advantage.” He refers to Jim Collins’ “Hedgehog and Fox” analogy to
illustrate how his father’s leadership qualities differ from his own. Basically, the leader
who knows many things, like Mel Bahr, is a Fox; while the leader who knows “one big
thing” is a Hedgehog. “I think my skills are better suited to building a business than
starting one,” Bahr says. “You need a different skill set to make that transition. But to
get the business started, he needed a wide range of skills and knowledge, from
engineering to accounting to finance to computers to insurance and benefits.”
Richard Bahr’s influence has extended across the organization, from the culture to the
operating procedures to the hiring practices. “We look for people who can simplify
things, rather than make them complex,” he says. The logic is irrefutable, and the
leadership style, although grounded in practical experience, could have come from a
top management theorist or a medieval philosopher.
MGS Machine requires an insurance agency with strong employee
benefits service and expertise
MGS Machine Corporation became a client of Associated Financial Group about four
years ago, just when Lori Marlette joined the company as manager of finance,
information, and materials. “I had done business with Associated Financial Group
previously and was very satisfied with the kind of support that they could offer.”
MGS Machine also uses the corporate banking services of Associated Banc-Corp
(Associated Financial Group’s parent company).
In particular, MGS Machine needed a reliable consultant to help create the “best and
most well-rounded benefits package available” for a growing workforce, according to
Marlette. “Especially for us, a company that doesn’t have its own benefits
department or its own Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) folks, we
needed an outside expert,” she says. “And [Associated Financial Group broker] Eric
Nuytten had earned my confidence—as well as his service team.”
Marlette chose to partner with Associated Financial Group because she knew the
strong customer service would benefit MGS Machine. “If we can’t answer our
employees’ questions,” she says, “then they can call Associated Financial Group
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directly and get someone to help them without having to think: ‘Do I call the
insurance company, who do I call, what do I do?’”
Marlette and her colleagues also subscribe to the Human Resource Hotline, which
employers can call to receive answers to human resource and employment law
questions. (New clients receive the Human Resource Hotline free for fifteen months,
and afterwards they can place an unlimited number of calls for a nominal fee). “Our
access to the Hotline has helped us avoid bad decisions and make good ones,” she
says.
Update July—August 2004 | Continue to next article
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http://www.associatedfinancialgroup.com/cfgupdate/2004/julaug/mgsmachine.asp
10/3/2006