National Clothesline

Selecting a person to represent Tailwind Shirt Systems as our 2004 Manager of the Year was a real challenge. This year, there were several extraordinary candidates, and whittling that group down to two would prove to be the easy part. When I was being interviewed for my first manager job 27 years ago, I remember my superior coming to me with a Super Bowl metaphor. He said, “At the Super Bowl, both teams are the best, but only one can be the winner.” Somehow that was comforting. But in the Super Bowl there can only be one winner.

Must that be the case here? I have looked over the accomplishments of both of my finalists for months now. Even before either was nominated by their superiors, I knew that they would be in contention, so I was already evaluating their performances. The more I looked at them, the more I knew that neither of them could be a “loser.” Neither of them is second best.

The result, simply, is two winners. Both of the winners have not only excelled at executing and administering the Tailwind System at their plants, but their management styles have made it appear easy and effortless. They have been impossible to compare because they each faced unique challenges.

Please join me in congratulating Barbara Lewis and Chad Monteith as the 2004 Tailwind Shirt Systems Manager of the Year.

Barbara is the laundry manager for Puritan Cleaners in Richmond, VA. She also handles all of the company’s claims and is responsible for the operation of three separate laundry plants. Many of us find it difficult to leave our plants to run without our supervision even for a couple of hours.

But in Barbara’s case, she can never be firmly rooted at any of the plants.

This requires management skill and the ability to delegate. Barbara’s “bedside manner” is amazing. I love to watch her train, supervise and reprimand. It all looks the same!

Barbara has been with Puritan since she was 16 years old. She rose through the ranks with her smile, warm personality, dedication and hard work. I think that Gary Glover, president of Puritan Cleaners, says it best: “Barbara Lewis is an outstanding person.”

She is a true team leader who leads by example. She treats her team to a firm but friendly management style. Her outstanding production numbers do not move up or down very much. She stays the course with a calm and quiet personality that everyone warms up to. Her team works hard because they want to. Gary is right, Barbara’s team works hard because they want to work for her. That’s what makes a Manager of the Year.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, there were challenges facing another Tailwind manager. Chad Monteith is the production manager at Ablitt’s Fine Cleaners in Santa Barbara, CA. Chad took over as production manager after he watched his two predecessors fail. Chad was in charge of the routes at the time.

He quietly watched and perhaps imagined what he would do if he was in charge. He was never offered the job as production manager, he asked for it. And he asked for it without a salary increase. He wanted to prove what he could do first, then talk about compensation later.

Did he prove himself? Chad more than doubled production, cut out overtime and halved the supplies cost at Ablitt’s. It is easy to conclude when you read “more than doubled production” that Ablitt’s must have been in rather poor shape rather than extraordinary shape now. Actually, both of those are true and that is what makes Chad a Manager of the Year.

Neil Ablitt says it this way: “All Chad had to do was change a corporate culture, overcome a resistant management network, introduce production standards, change established procedures and convince a production department of the benefits of a system (Tailwind) they had been told would not work. So he did it. Not many people would have survived. Chad didn’t start at ground level, he started underground and dug himself out.”

And, as if that wasn’t enough, all the while the company was undergoing a regime change. Neil Ablitt, company founder and CEO, has been systematically turning over the company to his daughter, Sasha, during the past year. Even that has failed to rattle Chad.

He has learned to get along very well with Sasha. He has learned to savor his accomplishments at Ablitt’s. He likes working there and he has certainly earned the respect of his subordinates.

So there you have it, two extra-ordinary individuals who faced unique challenges that did not defeat them. A year ago, Barbara Lewis took the Tailwind Shirt System and made it her way of life as well as that of all of her entire staff. Her production numbers are the envy of the industry.

That alone makes her outstanding. Chad believes in the Tailwind System, which he uses for shirts and drycleaning, so much that he used it as a vehicle to bring Ablitt’s to the next level in spite of virtually every conceivable obstacle. Congratulations to both of you!

Chad can be reached at chadmontieth@ablitts.com; Barbara’s e-mail is puritan@puritancleaners.com