Playing By The Rules

Tweet

Gabrel, too, feels the lack of experience painfully, criticizing particularly his own inability "to look out for my own best interests" in negotiations.

"Because I don't have any experience or training beyond what I got at the Hideaway, I find it very difficult to organize people. I don't like to give people job descriptions or create an organizational pattern. I feel uncomfortable putting people in a niche; it strikes me as artificial." As a consequence, the organization has stayed loose, with virtually no lines of authority, a problem that will become more severe as the company grows. Most of the staff still thinks of Gabrel as a friend and co-worker; if they have a decision to make or a problem, they wantto talk directly with him.

For Gabrel as well, most of his employees remain his friends, "so I find that the hardest thing for me is when I have to let someone go. I'd like to think that everyone here can grow with the company, can maximize all their potentials, can cope with jobs that get harder and harder. But, unfortunately, that's not always been the case."

But Gabrel insists he knows that hard personnel decisions will have to be made in the future, that the company will need people with the background to move the company forward. For proof, he points to Scott Gregory, the 41-year-old comptroller hired last year.

"This is the first time I've ever been a symbol of maturity," Gregory jokes. He has added a computer for payroll, receivables, and sales, including a customer file on all 8,000 wholesale accounts. And generally he feels optimistic. "The problems here are fairly typical for a rapidly growing company," he says. "It's just a question of getting systems into place."

For Lee and Cookie Centraccos, the dominant outsiders on his board of directors, the changes are not coming fast enough, however. For the past four years the board has helped steer the company, sitting through marathon sessions on such details as hiring, salaries, and production quotas. Now the board members are afraid the company and the opportunities may be too big for that to work. The inexperience is beginning to scare them. It has been the major topic at board meetings.

"For three years we've been urging Gary to bring more professionals into the company " Lee Centraccos says. "We can't continue to operate the way we have been. The sales and marketing staffs are dedicated and hard-working, but they get eaten alive at the level the company has gotten to now. We need managers with training."

Even, perhaps, at the top. Gabrel, they say, doesn't have enough background to know how to make the crucial decisions involved in running a big company. And he won't separate running a business from having fun. "He's afraid of hurting people. And he can't stand to fire anyone," says Lee Centraccos. "He's a nice guy, which is admirable, but when you're running a business you have to be hard-nosed.

"For three years Gary wasn't a problem," he says. "But as the company becomes more complex, the job becomes more complex. I don't know when is the time to bring in a professional manager, but that time has to come. So far, though, Gary hasn't wanted to let go."

"Gary was hoping to reach certain destinations in his life," Cookie Centraccos suggests. "But he should think of Pente as a train. Maybe the role for him in the future is to look for new cars, not to have to make sure the train keeps chugging down the track. Maybe that's where he'd be happiest."

"My ego isn't really hung up on being CEO," Gabrel says. No one on the board has ever directly broached the subject of his stepping aside, but he agrees he might be happier letting someone else "steer the train." At times, the thought of giving up budgeting, planning, and personnel, and instead spending his days looking for new product, playing games, and devising strategies for marketing them appeals to him. "If I really want the business to do well, I have to be objective about my own limitations.

"There is a next stage to Pente's development," he says. "Pente has to become a social institution. But for that to happen it has to become a real business first.

"It's hard to understand how many games Pente could sell through mass-merchandise outlets. It's hard to fathom us selling that much product. It's not hard to fathom when you see how big the country is, but that can be a little intimidating from here in Stillwater.

"Because of who I am and who I want to be I'm not sure if I can take the company that next step. I'm not a bad businessperson, but I'm not a fantastic one, either. And I'm not necessarily anxious to become one. I'm not interested in the ins and outs of cash flow and P&L statements. And I'm not interested in becoming hard-nosed."

Gabrel already wonders at the cost he has paid in hours on the road, meetings at his desk disappointments, and frustrations. But he has come too far to stop now.

Gabrel may well step aside, he says, as soon as I stabilize the business." he will delegate. He dreams of the life he has planned. Someday. "But for now I have an obligation."

Gabrel never pictured himself in business. He wanted to be a philosopher. Or a sociologist. He ended up a games player. But the patterns on the board have become more and more complex over the years. And he has learned, in his 32nd year, that each move is irrevocable. So far, the game has proved easy to learn. But difficult to master.

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5