Happiness Pays

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"I don't want to hear how no one tells people anything! When you have access to information through paetec.com....Have you hired someone lately? Who has? Okay. How many of them have gone through paetec.com on their lunch hours? Don't know. That's the kind of stuff we need to do as managers. Everyone says no one tells me anything. There's a responsibility we all have as managers to force that upon them. You're gonna get your stock options this year, all employees this year, there's going to be a 20-question quiz on the Web to get your options. You don't pass that quiz, it's open book, you don't get your options. Take it 20 times, I don't care, God bless you. Fair enough, fair enough. End of my speech. Okay, now I go into happy mode."

He outlines how he wants managers to invite people outside the company to company parties. Then, "No. 6. Budget, budget, budget. This is a happy thing. There's cash rolling in all the time. It's amazing. So all of you master sandbaggers out there--we are going to run the business the next five years just the same way we've been running it. We are not going to go crazy on expenses. We are not going to spend 80 grand for a sign. I have people who want to spend 80 grand for a sign. Have you lost your mind? How about getting some nice workstations for the new employees? Just remember, and this is a fun thing, when you have money, that's when you get that much tougher on what you spend money on. We're not going back to the dot-com era. Just think, if it was all your money, what would you spend it on? On a sign? Of course not. Nice to do won't happen. Have to do will happen. Want to do may happen. Nice to do, cross it out."

The subliminal message is: Wake up. It is your money, people. You own this company. Now, a sign for the building isn't an ice sculpture leaking vodka. It would seem to at least qualify as a want to do. But not for Chesonis, because a sign doesn't function.

The level of silence both in the conference room and on the conference call line, where other managers around the country are listening, is surprising. There is joking and conversation by the end of the meeting, but not much. The electrical charge is still high. Nobody steps forward to challenge him other than Ottalagana, at one point. And that moment passes quickly.

Chesonis's wife, Pam, says she challenged him a lot when they worked together at ACC. She works now part-time, on vendor contracts in a little, undecorated office. She says her husband is actually a shy person who gets very nervous when he has to do public speaking. But nothing about running PaeTec bothers him--not firing people (he calls it "pruning the rosebush"), not dealing with people from Wall Street who want to take him public, not a lawsuit from AT&T. His only serious weakness may be his impatience with people who don't quickly recognize the move he's set up for them on the board. "When people don't get it, he gets unhappy," his wife says. "He definitely has a temper. If somebody doesn't get it, they'll see that side of him."

Chesonis has stamped the company with his values, particularly his orientation toward family. But he does it not simply because it's the right thing to do. It makes people more productive. There's a payoff. It has little to do with kindness, or sensitivity, or feelings. It's simply the most intelligent approach: to put people first and reap the rewards of having a team of loyal, devoted employees. He understands what motivates people, what creates loyalty to the mission, and he plays the chess game to win, by treating people with respect. When they don't perform, they don't stay. He may be nice, but he's also tough and demanding.

If you put in a day, or a week, or a month, at PaeTec, you begin to realize what people are actually trying to keep alive here. You can list off all the elements of the company's success, but the intangible assets are the ones that matter most to people here. Everyone knows that, in some way, the company is still in its infancy, unspoiled, a small and fertile garden. They tread lightly through it. It isn't just the financial ownership that drives this care. It's the sense nearly everyone has that he or she is working in a place with an unusual kind of goodwill that flows down from the top and then rises back up from the bottom. You have the sense that each employee is doing everything possible, going to any length, not to spoil that goodwill.

"I took a cut in pay to come here because I wanted to be a part of the company, under Arunas's leadership again, and I was willing to do that," says Marion Wyand. "It's not all about the money. I get up every morning and I am excited about my job. I want my employees to be so excited that the customer wishes he or she worked here."

"Customers trust us," Bono says. "You become the go-to person for that company. We want the customer to need our help. We want to hear the customer say, 'I need you to tell me where to go.' I had a CEO who has known me for years, he called me because his fax machine didn't work. It's telecommunications, right? I called his administrative assistant. 'What is going on with the fax? It's probably out of paper.' She said, 'I don't know why he calls you with this stuff. I think he just wants to talk with you."

David Dorsey is a freelance writer living in Rochester, N.Y., and working on his second novel. The Force, his nonfiction book about a year in the life of a top Xerox sales force, was named one of the top business books of 1994 by BusinessWeek.

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