But most nightmares come to an end, and when the Centenaris woke up from this bad dream, they realized that not only had they survived, they could even catch a glimpse of prosperity. In a year or two, they were growing again. Better yet, they were beginning to make consistent money.
Sometime after that awakening, in 1995 or so, the new dream began to emerge. Hey, they told each other, this is fun. Forget selling out. Let's build a big company, one that keeps acquiring competitors, just the way we've been doing, and keeps on swiping market share from the stodgy inhabitants of this low-rent industry. Figure on 20% annual growth for 10 or 20 years, the brothers realized, and you eventually wind up with some very large numbers on the top line. "Billion-dollar business" began to be a phrase that you heard around Atlas.
Then there was that idea of building a different company, one founded on what the Centenaris liked to feel was their basic philosophy of business -- namely, that you should treat employees like human beings rather than like interchangeable parts. In cultural terms, Atlas would be Southwest Airlines, a hotbed of enthusiasm and cooperation in an industry characterized by lethargy or contention on the shop floor. "We believed that people should have stock," says Peter. "They should have ownership. And we thought if we were going to sell people stock, they'd have to have education." They'd also have to have access to all the financials -- open books. Maybe they should even have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
It wasn't as if they absolutely had to change their culture; the company was already turned around, and the Centenaris could have gone on their merry way with conventional managerial ideas. In fact, when a consultant, over lunch in a delicatessen across from the plant, first broached the idea of opening Atlas's books, Paul nearly gagged. ("'You gotta be kidding me.' That was my word-for-word reaction," he confesses.) But he did read the guide to open-book management that the consultant recommended. Paul talked things over with Peter. They read more books. One of them was the mid-1990s hit Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace by Ricardo Semler, in which the author, a Brazilian CEO, describes running a democratic, open-book company in which people set their own salaries. Before too long, they were sold. We gotta do this, the brothers said. "The whole idea -- it was not only challenging, it was exhilarating," Paul says now. "We also looked at it as a strategy to help us achieve our goals, to build this thing and become a major force. It made the business much more interesting, much more exciting."
What is this company -- this force -- today, eight years later? As a business, Atlas is undoubtedly successful, its sales up from $5.8 million in 1990 to $45 million in 2000 and an estimated $69 million in 2002, its net profit positive every year for nearly a decade. Not too shabby for a manufacturing company in major growth mode. And is it truly a different kind of company? Well, you wouldn't want to exaggerate. The work on the shop floor, as in any box company, is hard, blistering hot in summertime, and occasionally dangerous (the number of lost-time accidents last year: five). People screw up, the way people do everywhere. (A major accounting error last summer forced the company to take big write-offs in the fourth quarter, eating into profits.) Still, what you see in the old plant outside Baltimore really is different from most other companies, on at least three counts. And what you get from those differences is a bunch of reasons to think that, like Southwest, Atlas Container may indeed be capable of growing and growing and growing some more, just as the Centenari brothers are imagining.
Difference No. 1, if you were to put the differences into categories, would include a bunch of little things -- little, that is, only to people who have spent their working lives in white collars and well-lit offices. The bathrooms are spotless. There's a big room dubbed the Learning Center, where employees can take classes or pursue self-directed training programs on company computers, and another room equipped with Nautilus machines. Employees and spouses alike can pursue high school equivalency degrees (G.E.D.'s) and other educational goals at the company's expense; children and grandchildren who need help for supplementary tutoring get it at a Sylvan or Huntington Learning Center. "My wife got her G.E.D.," says Bruce Foster, the lead man in the press department and die cut area, "and it ended up costing me 10 grand -- because then she went back to get a college degree."
Another "little" thing: The door that separates the shop floor from the office and the doors that lead into the Centenaris' offices are open both in theory and in fact, a small revolution in itself. During the old regime, "you didn't even talk to management," says Tim Blevins, a press operator who has worked at the plant for 15 years, under the previous ownership and the present one. "You weren't allowed past the door." Blevins and several other employees say that today they really do go talk to Paul or Peter if they have a problem -- or, in fact, pretty much anytime they feel like it. In a factory, that's no small matter.
Difference No. 2 revolves around ownership and open books. Atlas is an S corporation, so the Centenaris can't issue stock directly to employees. Instead, they've created a legal device called stock appreciation rights (SARs), a kind of phantom stock that can be bought through payroll deductions and that pays off, according to a formula, when the employee retires or if the company is sold. About 100 of 150 eligible employees joined the plan when it was offered three years ago; 90 of those 100 are still with the company. Another round of SARs is likely to be offered to employees in the near future, so that newer employees can buy in as well.
