Inc. writers and editors write about their favorite companies.
The choices of the Inc. staff
Scratch a sportswriter, it's been said, and you'll find a fan inside, a little boy or girl who wants to stand up and cheer for their favorite team.
It's true for restaurant critics, too. For all their vaunted objectivity, each has a favorite boîte that lingers in the mind long after the review has been written.
Business writers are just the same. Focusing as we must on today's story, we search for the new and topical. But there is always, in the back of our minds, a favorite company from stories past. Perhaps the product was state-of-the-art or the employees exceptionally motivated. Perhaps the CEO brought a boa constrictor to work.
No matter. They make us want to stand up and cheer.
GEORGE GENDRON
I'm being cross-utilized today. What this means, for those of you not familiar with the fashionable human-relations argot, is that at the moment I'm doing a job I wasn't hired to do in the first place -- namely, writing. The editor of this story is ordinarily a writer, but he's being cross-utilized too, so he gets to review my prose.
The popularizer of this hazardous practice of switching jobs with one's colleagues is Don Burr, founder and CEO of my favorite company, People Express Airlines Inc. That's right, People Express. The company everybody -- "everybody" here referring to Wall Street analysts, travel agents, and business travelers -- loved to hate.
Now I could make an argument about the genius of People's original marketing strategy to treat an airline seat like any other commodity, knocking the price down so low that flying was often cheaper than driving or taking the bus. After all, it was this strategy that made air travel accessible to millions who had been excluded because of cost. (And I confess to a weak spot for companies that are in the business of democratizing anything -- be it transportation or personal computing.)
Or I could point to People's pioneering approach to human resources, an attempt to suppress the very foundation of most economic organizations: hierarchy itself. Several years after the last People Express flight, a whole generation of company builders still look to People Express as a model in their efforts to unleash the creative energies of their work force. But when I cite People Express as my favorite company I'm thinking of something else entirely, something much more personal. I'm thinking of what Don Burr and his gang down in Newark taught me about the importance of remaining, always, a fan of business -- an enthusiastic devotee of how the game is played. What Don Burr brought to his organization is an acute understanding that money -- profits, maximized shareholder value, call it what you will -- simply isn't sufficient to engage us, as managers or as workers. That capitalism at its best is about building, about enrichment, about value, about passion and commitment.
From a very personal point of view, people like Don Burr make my job lots of fun. I loved watching Burr play his own particular game of capitalism, just as I love watching Steve Jobs, Ben Cohen, Yvon Chouinard, and Paul Hawken play theirs. It's not so much that I want them to win, mind you, as I just want them to go on playing.
JOSHUA HYATT
I've often asked myself, what good is it having your own company if you can't bring your pet boa constrictor to work?
OK, maybe I hadn't asked it all that often before the summer of 1987, when I spent a few days with Burton A. Burton, the president of Casablanca Fan Co. Visit a few companies, and you begin to notice how every company reflects its founder's personality in one way or another. Maybe the people are secretive because the founder is shy. Or maybe they are fearful because the founder is a tyrant. But Casablanca is blessed with a founder who is just plain eccentric and unafraid to show it. As a result, a lot of things happen that it seems no one can really explain. I like that.
The day I visited the company, Burton A. Burton -- yes, it's his real name, and yes, he scrubbed many a latrine in the Marine Corps because his drill sergeants thought he was being a wise guy -- discovered a boa slithering along his car. He decided to bring it to work with him, storming into that day's management meeting boa in hand, terrorizing his managers. "I hate those things," one of them said, as Burton unwound the snake on the conference table.
You have to like Burton Burton, and not just because of his name. Because he peddles around the company on a fat-tire Schwinn bike, à la Pee-wee Herman. Because at sales meetings he invariably starts a craps game that some believe is his unique way of doling out incentive bonuses. Because when I asked him if I could come out to City of Industry, Calif., to visit, he warned me in a low voice: "Just don't wear a tie if you're serious about spending any time with us."
Who knows what he meant? Or why he felt so entranced by a big earth mover he saw that he dragged a group of managers away from work to gaze at it? Or why he hired a former vice-president of the Las Vegas Sands Hotel to be his general manager? Or why, when a telephone salesman showed up in his office, Burton handed him a firecracker, slapped him on the back, and sent him on his way?
And can anybody explain the floats? Burton insists that the company sponsor a float in the Rose Bowl parade -- even during years when Casablanca is cutting its advertising budget. Once he designed a float populated with a Bengal tiger and trapeze artists. When it came time to turn the corner, the float got stuck, right next to the main grandstand, where the media people sit. For nearly 20 minutes, the float held up the parade, filling up TV screens and prompting the announcers to repeat the Casablanca name over and over. Burton swore to me that it was not a publicity stunt. He says he doesn't know what happened. Maybe he doesn't.
That's another thing about Burton: it doesn't help to ask him questions. "What's so special about the car?" I asked, getting into his Buick Grand National. My stomach left me shortly thereafter. "Zero to 60 in 5.2 seconds," Burton said with a wink. "How come you don't live here?" I asked him while he was showing me the Malibu mansion he built for around $5 million. He shot back a look of utter disbelief. "Gee," he said, shaking his head, "I didn't really build this house to live in it."
