In January 1995, Baker took over the operation of a North Carolina company that St. Paul–based Ecolab had recently purchased. Shortly afterwards, he learned that the North Carolina company’s largest customer, which generated 65 percent of its sales, planned to give an Ecolab competitor half of its business. Ecolab decided to fight to retain that business; it became a two-and-a-half-year battle.
“The initial concerns are selfish: What is this going to mean for my career? The power came when I realized it wasn’t about me. I’ll be fine; I’ll get another job. We had 300 employees, many of them working in a plant in Greensboro where the job opportunities outside our operation were bleak. You recognize that those employees and their families are counting on you to get through this.
There’s nothing like a crisis to focus an organization. Once the senior team recognized we were doing it for the whole, we became much better. You recognize it’s a team game, and that fundamentally, the responsibility of the leaders is to serve the whole organization . . . . We came out in great shape. We ended up keeping that customer’s business and started a new business, which today is equal in size to that of the company when we bought it 10 years ago.”
