Profile: Phyllis Papani Godwin
by Jennifer BruniForty-five years after Nicholas Papani founded Granite City Electric, he asked his daughter if she would be interested running the company. That was 1969 – a time when Phyllis Papani Godwin was recently divorced and facing the prospect of raising two young daughters on her own.
She not only decided to accept her father’s offer, but also pursued an MBA from Suffolk University. Soon, she had the formal title of president of Granite City, and, over her long stewardship, she has seen the company pass $100 million in sales last year.
Today, most New Englanders know of Granite City because of its prominent sponsorship of the Boston Red Sox, with the company logo highly visible at Fenway Park. More recently, it became a corporate sponsor of the New England Patriots as well.
Since 2004, sales are up 65 percent, and Granite City has expanded from 15 to 20 locations.
Although Godwin grew up in a very traditional Italian first-generation immigrant family, her father valued education, sending her to Thayer Academy, Brown University and Radcliffe College, before went on to Suffolk for her MBA. She also has served as director and former chairman of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce and she was a founder of Braintree’s Horizon Bank & Trust. Godwin has served on numerous boards and foundations over 40 years.
We interviewed Godwin at her corporate offices in Quincy to talk about leadership and the changing roles and challenges of women in business.
Leadership guru Bill George recently published “True North,” which posits that the most effective leaders have a strong moral compass, one that always points up, or north. Would you agree with that statement?
Yes, I’d agree that leaders need to have a strong moral compass. At Granite City, we have developed a set of core values that guide our actions, behaviors and business decisions. What I’ve also learned over the years about leadership is that you need to know and understand yourself in order to be an effective leader. You have to be very introspective, so you can be comfortable with your own style of management – where it isn’t contrived.
You must be authentic, because people will sense right away if you are not. For example, when first I took over my father’s business, I thought, ‘Maybe I should try to be like my father.’ He was an extremely charismatic man who had a rather autocratic leadership style. But I quickly realized I couldn’t be that way, because I’m not like my father at all. I have a different style and a different way of attacking the world. So then I said, ‘OK, this is me. This is who I am. I have to lead in a way that makes me comfortable; that is predictable.’ You can’t change your style in mid-stream; otherwise people won’t respect you.
What leaders do you admire in business?
I do admire the former head of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina. I would have handled things a little differently, but she is a very gutsy and intelligent leader. And HP is now thriving, which is probably in large part due to her original ideas. It takes time for changes to blossom, and she didn’t have the support of her board, which is very important.
A lot has been done to advance women in business, but women still don’t have power on the boards, which is how decisions get made. Men tend to choose people on boards who are like them. Women have to advocate for each other. Unfortunately, women in higher positions are not doing enough in that regard in the corporate structure, but entrepreneurial women have more leeway and can make their own rules.
What can women do to increase their numbers on boards and in the ranks of senior management?
When I started in business 40 years ago there were no role models for women. It was a lonely road. Women in my generation had three choices: You could be a nurse, a teacher or a secretary, while you waited to get married. How well you married was the measure of your success – it had nothing to do with your career.
As I gained business experience, I saw firsthand that men had many opportunities through their social connections – through golf, and so on – to network for business, while women did not. That was one of the reasons why I started WBC, the Women’s Business Connection at the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, when I was chairman of the chamber in 1995-96. WBC made the chamber a friendlier and better place for women to meet and network – and for the men, too. I’m very proud of that accomplishment – of creating a group for women to network and have fun at it, as well.
Women are never going to make any strides until we reach out and help each other. We have a moral obligation – we have to make this a better world for our daughters and granddaughters. Women are still a great untapped resource – in the business world and elsewhere. Think of all the creativity and ideas that women are not allowed to contribute to the world. That’s why those of us who have the opportunity and who have gotten anywhere on the ladder have to help each other. There are a lot of women who forget this; who forget where they came from.
I know I am paving the way for other women. I have to be super-professional. I was the first woman in a lot of areas. It’s a very perilous path between being assertive and aggressive, and maintaining your sense of self in a male-dominated business.
Are you helping to mentor and steer younger women?
A lot of young women don’t think of business as a possible vocation, which concerns me. They think they can have more impact, and change the world, by having a career in medicine or at a nonprofit. While these are extremely worthwhile career paths, it does worry me that young women must sense on some level that the business world is not for them; that it does not welcome them.
That, in turn, would signal a terrible loss of both talent and opportunity for the business world. I just read a recent study that found that only 8 percent of young women today would consider a career in business. What a loss for business and for young girls.
I am trying to change this [trend] by recruiting female college students for internships here. Many of our interns come from Simmons College, a women’s liberal arts school in Boston. I try to mentor as many young women as possible, and I always advise women to find a mentor, work with other women; push yourself to keep learning all the time. Always be reading, questioning, learning. That should be your lifelong, never-ending mantra. You’re much more likely to stay motivated when you work with someone you admire and respect.
Young people also need to know that you can help a lot of people by running a business. It’s an opportunity to change what business is about. It’s not about numbers. Ultimately it’s about relationships and people. I’ve said this for years, and I noticed that the Girl Scouts now have a CEO badge, to get girls thinking about business and entrepreneurism.
Should women seeking success in business bypass or the corporate world, with its glass ceiling and little support of working mothers, and start their own businesses?
They say you can teach people to be entrepreneurial, but I think when it comes right down to it, being entrepreneurial is something that you either have or you don’t. You must have a vision and a certain strength along with a support system to succeed. Some women – and men, for that matter – are much more secure in the corporate world because they like the structure and the dependability. It’s hard in the entrepreneurial world because you have to have a higher level of risk tolerance; and if you have a family to support and other obligations on top of that, you’re putting them at risk, too.
You emphasize the importance of continuous learning, no matter what your age or position. What business books do you recommend?
One of my favorite business books that I read over and over is “The Discipline of Market Leaders by Treacy & Wiersema.” They advise to choose your customers and narrow your focus in order to dominate your market.
My son-in-law, Leo Meehan, who is the president and CEO of WB Mason, and I refer to this book quite a bit. The authors talk about how there are three basic types of companies: operationally efficient – think Wal-Mart; product leader, such as Sony; and customer intimate, which creates the “cult of the customer.”
Granite City is, and strives to be, a customer intimate company. Small businesses can really excel with this model. As a customer intimate company, you choose your customers and you become a total solutions provider for your customers, because you want to be everything for your customer.
It creates very strong customer loyalty and is really quite effective. The trick is to take care of your employees, especially the ones who have the first point of contact with your customers.
Ironically, these are usually the lowest-paid employees in an organization, such as the receptionist, the sales clerk, truck drivers and so on. But these are the people who know the customers better than top management. And these are the people who, believe it or not, you need to give authority and responsibility to so they can do whatever it takes to please the customer. It’s a very counterintuitive idea for many senior executives and business owners, who feel the need to control things closely. But it really works – I know from experience that it does.
Is there a difference in the way women and men build and lead teams?
Women do tend to be collaborative, and sometimes that approach does take time. Sometimes guys get impatient with that. George McDonald, our vice president of operations, once said to me, “If you were my commanding officer in Vietnam, we’d all be dead.”
The downside of taking a more collaborative approach is that you can lean towards analysis paralysis, and I was accused of this at first. But again, it circles back to being true to yourself as a leader – and how those aspects of your personality tend to shape your management style. I’m not militaristic at all. As a matter of fact, I hate war, I hate hierarchies, and I hate bureaucracies; which is why, with [Granite City’s] customer intimate structure, all the decisions have to be pushed down to the people working on the floor. I’m always pushing for a flatter organization. That’s what family businesses can do, where big companies cannot.
What green initiatives are under way at Granite City to lessen the environmental impact of your products and services?
We’ve been doing a lot of green initiatives in our lighting showrooms, and we’re planning on continuing along that trend to save on energy and environmental costs. We really need to act now to save the environment for our children and grandchildren. We are selling more and more fixtures that are Energy Star approved, as well as the compact fluorescent bulbs. There are two states that have already banned incandescent [bulbs], and there is some talk under way in Massachusetts of doing the same.
On a commercial level, there is a new lamp (that’s the industry term for a bulb) called the T5, which provides incredible illumination at a very low wattage. We’ve been retrofitting all of our warehouses with these new energy-saving fixtures and bulbs. I’ve also found that energy audits have been a very useful way for businesses to conserve and reduce their electricity costs. Utilities are offering rebates and other incentives to upgrade lighting as well. There has to be a worldwide initiative [to prevent further global warming], but we all have to start to do something right now on an individual level, and one of the easiest things to do right now is to change your light bulbs in your home and your business over to compact bulbs.
You seem to be solving the challenge of growing your business without getting squeezed out by the big guys and the smaller niche players on either end of the spectrum. How did you decide which market segments Granite City would focus on?
Our existing customer base is very concentrated – 75 percent are electrical contractors. We’ve always targeted them and catered to them. But we’re constantly exploring new areas, and testing out new customer bases.
Now we’re also targeting colleges, universities, hospitals and schools. Schools and hospitals are target customers because that’s where the growth is. But the electrical contractor will always be our main customer.
We also sell to retail customers in our five lighting showrooms. Originally, all lighting showrooms were wholesale or to-the-trade only, but that has changed over the years as consumers became more interested and involved in building and updating their own homes.
What marketing advice would you give to a small business owner looking to expand?
Smaller, family-owned companies can be really long-range in their thinking. Because we are privately held, we don’t have to answer to shareholders or Wall Street analysts each quarter. That’s what makes us different than the big guys. We can react to marketplace changes very quickly, and we are closer to our customers in every sense.
You have to define your USP – unique service proposition – which is important for every business. Think: How am I going to brand myself? You need the visuals of a good brand, and you must be unwavering in that. Compare every strategic decision against that USP, and be focused on that. If you continually talk to your employees about your USP and what your vision is, they in turn will talk to your customers and that vision, that focus, will remain intact.
I once asked Jack Welch, when he was still at GE, if small companies could survive in the new global economy. He said, “GE’s advantage is in size and in resources. Your advantage is that you are nimble, you have no layers of bureaucracy, and you are closer to your customers – just remember that small companies will always have those three main advantages.”
Meeting him reinforced my sense that Granite City could make it over the long run if we stuck to those basic advantages, didn’t lose focus and stayed true to our core values, no matter how big we get.
Published in Plymouth County Business August/September 2007 and Cape Business January/February 2008
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