Photograph By Shane Van Boxtel/Image Studios
After a major equipment failure in 2017 sent Oshkosh Door into a tailspin, President Chris Calawerts focused on rebuilding the company’s bedrock — its workforce.
“I don’t care about doors. I care about people,” says Calawerts, who cut his teeth in his family’s Green Bay commercial interiors company, VerHalen, Inc., and also served as president of Encap, LLC before joining the commercial wood door manufacturer.
Today Calawerts leads the 136-person team at Oshkosh Door, as well as the company’s two other divisions — Edgewater Door in Neenah and Oregon Door in Winston, Oregon. He recently sat down with Insight to share what he’s learned about overhauling a business’ culture for the better.
Insight: The first time I met you, you gave me a huge box of cupcakes. Today you brought me a pound of Oaks Candy. What are you trying to do to me?
Calawerts: I’m a sweet guy; what can I say?
But the thing that stuck out to me the most from our first meeting was the story of the culture at Oshkosh Door and how you really worked to turn it around after some disruptive events. And once the culture piece was remedied, then the business success was able to happen.
It followed it.
I think that’s something that unfortunately a lot of people can relate to — a miserable work environment that negatively affects business outcomes.
Culture is such a huge part of a business. It impacts so much. And it’s hard to achieve. I’m in the middle of that out in Oregon right now. January was the one-year anniversary for my new general manager and we’ve got the culture turned around, so I’m feeling better about understanding the process of changing the culture. It takes a lot of key people, and a lot of changes in the structure and in the processes. And trust from the employees. I had to earn that. We had weekly meetings in the beginning and I would share information on how we’ve performed, good and bad, and what we’re doing to remedy all of that. It took a while.
Take me back to when you first started at Oshkosh Door. How would you describe the culture at that time?
I joined Oshkosh Door as the sales and marketing manager in 2014, but my opportunity came when we had a catastrophic failure of some plant equipment in 2017 and production was down for three weeks. When the equipment failed, everybody ran. All our customers canceled their orders. It took us a long time to regain their trust. I was on the apology tour all of 2017. I knew if things didn’t change, I needed to go.
What made you stay?
Our owner [Todd Robinson] asked me to be president. I wanted to focus on the people, but I didn’t know what to tell them. At that time I was consulting a little bit with [O’Connor Connective] and they kept saying just tell the team how these changes are going to impact them and basically put your arms around them. And that’s what I did from that very moment. I said, “This is the situation we’re in and I don’t know all the answers, but I know we can bring people in to help us and there’s moves we can make right now.” It was constantly speaking to them from my heart to their heart. We made some tough decisions in the beginning. We started to hire the right people to manage things and to do it with respect, kindness and care.
In addition to establishing the right leadership team, what are some other things you did to improve morale?
We moved base comp way up. The starting wage was about $14.50 an hour, and we’re up to over $20 an hour starting wage. That was a big one. From a process standpoint, we used to do a single piece flow at the plant. That was a mistake because if any machine broke, then all of a sudden the entire plant was down. Now we build inventory between applications. Another thing was we invested so much in repairing, replacing and just generally fixing up the equipment. When you’re working on a machine that actually works and you feel like you’re doing well, that starts to build confidence.
How has the improved culture translated to business outcomes?
The company has grown 211% — over two times. We’re growing at a really nice pace. We have gone from an average unit price of $279 a door to over $500 a door. Instead of making cheap, low-value products, we make high-end, high-value complicated products. And we do it fast. But the culture had to happen first because people have to believe in themselves internally that what they are doing adds value, so when I asked them to charge 10% more than our competition for it, they can feel and see the value because we talk about it all the time and that is what we bring to customers. Now, for the first time, I feel like I can step back and look for our next acquisition. I can look for that next thing, that next product, the next way we’re going to move this to be a $250 million company.
What advice would you give to other business leaders facing similar culture challenges?
Don’t be afraid to take a chance, but you got to jump in. You can’t be on the outside. Garth Brooks has a song called “Standing Outside the Fire.” In that song, he talks about how a lot of people think it’s cool if you just stand outside and don’t get caught in the fire, but it’s the people who dive in with their heart and their soul — they might get hurt, but they’re the ones that are going to lead it to success.
