Excerpts from interviews by Features Editor Emily Letterman, eletterman@sbj.net.With nearly 150 years of experience in business combined, Shaun Burke, David Haffner, Lynn Morris, Jack Prim and Dr. Robert Steele operate some of southwest Missouri’s largest companies. These men are the public faces of multimillion-dollar businesses and bosses to thousands of employees, but outside the office, they’re just regular guys.
How do you define success?Shaun Burke: Success is finding something that you can embrace that motivates and inspires you to better yourself or others. There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from your failures.
David Haffner: Obviously, having a compelling product at attractive prices goes a long way, but even the best product doesn’t guarantee success without dedicated service from employees with high standards of honesty, integrity and customer service.
Robert Steele: At the risk of sounding like Webster’s, it is achieving a worthy goal that maximizes satisfaction and happiness. For me professionally, that means working with an accomplished team to help our patients remain as healthy as possible.
Lynn Morris: I believe success is defined in my life as seeing and making other people happy and healthy through my pharmacies. One has to be happy with themselves and have a strong relationship with God – that’s success.
Jack Prim: I love it when a plan comes together. I enjoy seeing a well-conceived and well-executed plan achieve the desired outcome. It doesn’t really matter what kind of plan – it could be a significant sale, a complex installation, a successful new product launch or a well-received employee initiative, but I consider it particularly successful when we hear from a customer that we exceeded their expectations on a project.
What’s your management style, and how has it contributed to the growth of your business?Burke: I am a big believer in the principles of Jim Collins’ book, “Good to Great.” As a CEO, the most important role I have is ensuring we “first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, the right people in the right seats and then we decide where to drive.” I do not micromanage and believe in providing our leaders the tools to be successful; giving them all the credit for successes while taking a greater share of the blame when we miss.
Haffner: Pretty collegial. I prefer to include my subordinate staff in as many decisions as practical.
Morris: I feel my management style has changed and improved since I launched my pharmacy in 1977. I delegate a lot more today than I did 30 plus years ago. We truly are a family business, with my wife and three children all assisting with the day-to-day operations of the business, along with a talented management team. While my family and management team handle the day-to-day operation of the business, I tend to focus on larger projects and strategic planning.
Prim: The rules we try to live by at Jack Henry & Associates are, “Do the right thing. Do whatever it takes. And have fun.” Our business model is inherently complex – we sell mission-critical technology solutions to a relatively unsophisticated end user. Said differently, our systems are vital to the successful operation of a financial institution and many of our customers do not have a lot of technical talent on their staffs. So our systems have to work, and if something goes wrong, it has to be corrected in a hurry. That can create a stressful work environment. So we strive to live by the rules, including having fun – whether it’s taking a pie in the face for charity or landing in a dunk tank at an employee picnic.
Steele: By nature, health care is complicated, often requiring the input of many individuals. Therefore, I use a range of management styles to fit the situation, the needs of our co-workers and Mercy. Tailoring style allows our already talented workforce to maximize their strengths, which in turn leads to optimal outcomes and patient satisfaction.
Do you tweet?Burke: I do not tweet.
Haffner: No, but my wife has a big bird feeder in the backyard that attracts a lot of tweeters.
Morris: I am just learning how to tweet, but I do honk if a car in front of me does something wrong.
Prim: No – my life isn’t nearly interesting enough to warrant periodic updates throughout the day.
Steele: As @MercyDocRob, I have been known to give an occasional #shoutout to @sbjnet. In 2013, if your organization is not engaged in social media, you risk irrelevance.
How do you start your ordinary day, and how does it end?Burke: I start most days at the gym at 5:30 a.m. It is a great way to relax, clear my thoughts and prepare for the day ahead. Near the end of each day, I dedicate time to spend with my family, then generally end the day reading and catching up on mail and industry periodicals.
Haffner: I’m up at about 5:15 a.m. When in town, I go to my aging mother’s house to have coffee with her and check any emails that have come to me the night before. I’m into the office by about 6:30 a.m. or so. I wind down at the office by about 6 p.m. and head home to supper. Before bed, at about 11:30 p.m., I check emails that have been sent since I left the office.
Morris: I have two lives now that I am in Jefferson City, but at home in Nixa, I start my morning at 6 a.m. with coffee, the newspaper and my wife Janet. We discuss issues, the daily activities at Family Pharmacy and our schedules for the day. We basically end our day the same way, talking to each other as we go to bed. In Jefferson City, I start every morning at the Capitol by 7 a.m. and usually return to my hotel by 8 p.m. each evening.
Prim: I usually get off to an early start, between 4:30 and 4:45 a.m. so I can get a run or some other physical activity in before getting in to the office. If I’m in town, I’ll have dinner with my wife, maybe catch last night’s “Colbert Report” on DVR. I suppose it’s a sad commentary when your preferred news source is made up news. I usually read for a while before calling it a night. Now you can see why I don’t tweet.
Steele: It starts with two cups of hot tea, news on my iPad RSS reader and some luck in getting matching socks out of my dresser since I’m the first one up and generally get dressed in the dark. The day ends after my bride and I have gotten the kids bathed, in bed, and we then settle into our oversized chair to catch each other up on our day.
What is your greatest weakness, and how do you counteract that?Burke: Lack of patience. I challenge my leadership team to hold me accountable for realistic expectations, just as they do of the people who report to them.
Haffner: I am less than a stellar salesman – I’m an engineer and applied physicist – but have found that our outstanding salesmen and women are able to shield me from my weakness with our customers.
Morris: My greatest weakness is probably accounting, but I counter that with an outstanding internal accounting team.
Prim: It’s hard to narrow it down to just one. I’m pretty impatient by nature. Everything takes longer and costs more than I think it should, but I trust the team I work with to do the right thing, the right way. I just try to stay out of their way, so I just try to stay out of their way.
Steele: My wife would say it’s my memory, and I would have to agree. With so much changing in health care, keeping up with all the challenges and opportunities requires a tapestry of tools. That’s why I live and die by my tablet, where I can quickly reference my calendar, email and personal notes.
What is your retreat?Burke: Spending time with my family on our boat at Table Rock Lake.
Haffner: I built myself a machine shop several years ago and make custom knives for a hobby. I give them away to people I admire and recipients include Boone Pickens, Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Eric Church, Jason Aldean, Toby Keith, Hank Williams Jr., Jamie McMurray, Marty Smith, Kasey Kahne and many others. Shop time is my decompression therapy.
Morris: My retreat is my family. My wife, Janet, and I have three grown children and six grandchildren. My four-legged family member, Waldo, an English bulldog is also a constant companion at home and the office. My greatest retreat is the ability to spend time at the lake house and on the water with my family.
Prim: Probably that first 60 to 90 minutes of the day. At 5 a.m., you pretty much have the world to yourself. I find it to be a great time to think through challenges or opportunities and get a head start on the day.
Steele: My retreat isn’t necessarily a place, but an activity. The best blood pressure lowering drug for me is a dinner date with Renee. I love a nice night out together. Add in a warm Springfield summer night driving my 1979 Scout with the top off, and I’m in heaven.
Current trends show CEOs who are handpicked for their positions, rather than rising through the ranks or starting their own company. How did you enter the field?Burke: This year marks my 30th year in banking and nine years ago, I was solicited by the board of directors of the bank to become the president and CEO.
Haffner: I rose through the Leggett & Platt ranks with increasing responsibilities during the past 30 years.
Morris: I ended up in the CEO position when I founded Family Pharmacy in August of 1977 in Ozark. I remember we filled 12 prescriptions our first day in business, and we haven’t looked back. We now fill several thousand prescriptions across our company each day in locations spanning southwest Missouri. My role was vastly different when we had one store and four employees than it is today, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Working with my family, bettering the communities we serve and helping others is immensely rewarding work.
Prim: I have spent my entire career in technology solutions for community financial institutions since working my way through college in a bank. I worked for a company that was a competitor to JHA until that division was acquired by JHA in 1995. I served in a variety of roles at JHA before having the opportunity to take over as CEO in 2004. We have a pretty unique culture at JHA and value it highly. If at all possible, we look to fill our senior management positions from within the company.
Steele: Administratively, my path began at Mercy in health plans and managed care. As a practicing physician in an already highly integrated, nationally recognized health system, this gave me a in-depth perspective on how the practice of medicine meets the business side.
