Employees Feel Comforting Efficiency
In Stephen Reuning's World of Order
By DAN MORSE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 4, 2000
MILLSTONE TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- Naked under a layer of bubbles, a fine
sweat across his brow, Stephen M. Reuning leans back into his hot tub. It's
5:30 a.m.
Mr. Reuning reaches for a tiny tape recorder perched on the marble ledge and
starts dictating. "Don't sift through your e-mail like an obese geriatric,"
he says, his New Jersey accent slicing through the tub's low rumbles.
Mr. Reuning is producing yet another training memo for his 18-year-old
recruiting firm, Diedre Moire Corp. Take "30 minutes isolating the most
placeable candidate," he says. "Then spend two hours generating contacts via
voice phone, fax and e-mail. ..."
These days, managers everywhere are abandoning old-fashioned operating
procedures, ignoring corporate manuals and reinventing strategies overnight.
Rigidity is out and flexibility is in.
Not at Steve Reuning's New Jersey offices. New employees at Diedre Moire
must copy Mr. Reuning's 244-page Standard Operating Protocol -- using
longhand script, three times over. It can often take 100 hours. They must
pass 12 oral exams, covering everything from motivational psychology to desk
decor to how to shake a client's hand. "Never use two hands on first
contact," staffers learn. The second hand comes later, "as intimacy grows."
The 44-year-old Mr. Reuning documents everything. He's up to 45,000 pages,
stored in the firm's computer network. Part of Diedre Moire's work is
low-tech: a lot of cold calls to recruit employees for biotech and software
companies. Part is high-tech: proprietary software that automatically combs
cyberspace for prospects. Mr. Reuning's recent 30-minute hot-tub dictation
covered both. "There's only one word I can think of for him," says office
manager Cynthia Angelini, who transcribed that memo, cataloging it as DMC
10.160.014, "and that's 'anal.' "
Mr. Reuning's world of order is not for everyone. Half of those thinking
about working for him head for the door when told about the protocol
requirements, he says. Of those who stay, about one in five lasts beyond a
year. Recruiter Don Klein spent nine months at Diedre Moire several years
ago and calls it more structured than the basic training he received at Fort
Dix. "They were robotic," he says.
Managing by the Book
New employees at Diedre Moire Corp. receive a 244-page Standard Operating
Protocol. They must copy it using longhand script -- three times over. Here
are some excerpts.
• Guiding Principle No. 6 (of 28):
Every process, procedure, product, form, letter, brochure, agreement, etc.
used by any Diedre Moire unit is documented, cataloged and stored in a
format causing such documentation to be easily and readily available to any
and all members of the firm -- even those outside of the unit.
• How to eat a business lunch:
All living things are programmed with a drive to feed. It is a subconscious
drive, which assures survival of the species. Our first relationships with
any human being are associated with feeding. As a result, eating is
associated with feelings of security, dependency, love and trust for most
people . . . The meal is used to get to know the person, and actual business
should be discussed afterward. A less powerful but effective application of
this law is to provide gifts of food, such as cookies.
• And how to sit during lunch:
Choose a corner table and take the seat against the walls forming the
corner. (Call restaurants in advance to reserve an appropriate table. Always
lead the way to the table and wait for your guests to be seated before
seating yourself.)
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• Hair/Grooming tips:
1. Follow reasonable convention, as dictated by the managerial members of
society.
2. Bring hair spray, brush or comb, and other grooming devices as necessary.
Plan for wind conditions, etc.
3. Brush your teeth, carry mints and/or breath freshener.
4. Control body odors.
5. Groom nails appropriately.
6. Keep pores clean.
• At the office, some items that should be on or in your desk:
Computer
Telephone
Training Manuals
Scrap Paper
Stapler
Paper Clips
• How to calculate availability of daily search assignments:
([([(1/[(a1+a2+a3. . . )/b])c]d)/12]/20) e% = f
• One of four ways to tell that a client is getting cold feet:
The decision maker client and his associates become more blunt, abrupt,
brash, curt, flippant, rude, testy, surly, or snappy.
• . . . And one of 10 possible solutions:
Contact other decision makers, decision influencers, and intelligence
sources at the client company . . . Intelligence sources might include (the
client-company) candidates in your own database, secretaries and
receptionists.
• The 35th of 36 traits of successful people:
Successful people constantly acquire specialized knowledge relevant to their
goals.
• Some people fear calling prospects.
(Four factors are cited, along with solutions. Here's No. 3):
They have low self-worth. They don't feel anyone would buy from them.
1. Use positive self-talk.
2. Read affirmations regularly.
3. Listen to appropriate hypnosis tapes.
4. Consider therapy.
Yet those who stick around say that there's a comforting efficiency about
the place. Veterans make six figures and can leave by 5:30. Mr. Reuning says
net income at the 21-person firm last year was $108,140 on sales of $2.5
million. The systems assure that delegated tasks are done correctly.
"If I went to a different company," says Diedre Moire veteran Steve Casano,
"it would be, on the surface, more relaxing. But I doubt that'd really be
the case." Hired by Mr. Reuning 10 years ago, Mr. Casano now supervises a
handful of staffers who have been identically trained. "I don't have to be a
control freak," says Mr. Casano. "The system becomes the control freak."
Mr. Reuning always takes Mondays off. In the spare time that other
entrepreneurs say they crave, he makes wine. He takes his son to Club Med.
He paints and sculpts, and he rides motorcycles.
Mr. Reuning's two desires -- control and leisure -- converge spectacularly
inside a paneled library in his sprawling home. He has 2,198 books and 3,260
audiotapes -- a collection that ranges from Mongol history to modern
self-help, all labeled, cross-referenced and cataloged under what he refers
to as his own Stevie Decimal System.
In the DNA
"Here's how it works," Mr. Reuning is saying on a recent Thursday, standing
next to a white marker board in his conference room. He is teaching a new
staffer, who has no background in science, the fundamentals of molecular
biology.
Mr. Reuning wears his usual dark blue suit over his bulky frame. The staffer,
Todd German, 48, sits at a wooden conference table. Splayed before him is a
thick training binder.
Mr. Reuning taught himself the science. He illustrates his lecture with
diagrams: "One antibody floating around there -- bang! -- attaches to a
foreign particle and says, 'Hey, here's a protein that doesn't belong.'
Well, now it sends a signal back to your immune system to start reproducing
antibodies and other mechanisms that have a matching receptor site."
There will be 10 such lectures, homework, more tests.
Customers such as Peter Suzdak appreciate the thoroughness of this sort of
training. Mr. Suzdak, senior vice president of research and development at
Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc., Baltimore, says he hears from a lot of
recruiting firms offering to find him scientists. Often, "it's like getting
a call from a used-car salesman," Mr. Suzdak says. "They don't understand
biotechnology, and try to bluff their way through it."
Not Diedre Moire staffers, he says. "They can actually talk the lingo, and
that makes a huge difference." Mr. Suzdak's company has enlisted Diedre
Moire to locate about 45 scientists. Diedre Moire staffers can ask smart,
spontaneous questions, Mr. Suzdak says, so while they're rigidly trained,
"it's also quite obvious they're able to think."
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In Montvale, N.J., Axel Unterbeck, president of
Memory Pharmaceuticals Corp., says Diedre Moire's "NeuroSearch" unit has
brought him about 32 scientists in the 2 1/2 years since he cofounded the
company. Because Diedre Moire uses its own databases and Internet search
tools, he says, the recruiters tend to work more quickly than most,
presenting him with organized spreadsheets detailing candidates. "They do
this quite systematically," Mr. Unterbeck says.
Mr. Reuning says that his firm's style merely plays to his strengths: "I'm
very good," he says, "at breaking problems down into very small parts."
Outside the office, Mr. Reuning's compulsiveness isn't always so profitable.
His doctor told him to take thyroid pills, but he won't because, he says,
doing so would cede control to a medicine. Red traffic lights also pose a
problem. Idling inside his Porsche 911 convertible recently, he shifted from
neutral to first gear nine times, in anticipation of the turn to green.
Early Delegates
Surrounded by the chaos of a housing project, his early home growing up in
Perth Amboy, N.J., Steve Reuning yearned for order. The building was known
as a nine-story pharmacy for all the illegal drugs being sold. By age 14,
his business instincts surfaced, and drove him to his first management
challenge: When selling marijuana, how to balance a need for control with
the benefits of delegation? "You could get other guys to do anything," he
says.
His friends purchased pot in two-pound bricks. Then he grouped everyone in
an assembly line. They employed a moist rolling system to produce precise
cylinders, lined up in exact numbers inside emptied Marlboro boxes, Mr.
Reuning recalls, having determined that profits were highest in the
already-rolled sector. He was also eliminating middlemen.
It was a childhood void of any moral standards, Mr. Reuning says, not one
he's proud of: "You wouldn't have wanted me in your neighborhood."
He ran into some scrapes with local police and eventually decided to try
college. He grew frustrated at the slow pace, dropping out after a year. It
was then that he saw an offer in the back of a magazine for a book called
"The Magic of Thinking Big," by David Schwartz. The motivational epic
convinced Mr. Reuning he could teach himself anything. He landed an
entry-level recruiting job. By his 26th birthday, he had opened his own
firm, Diedre Moire (pronounced "DEE-dra MOR-ay") -- taking the name from two
proper nouns randomly selected out of a science-fiction paperback a
co-worker was reading at the time.
But the business world quickly proved complicated. There were phone calls,
file folders, messy desks. Mr. Reuning drew a desk-supply diagram and posted
it. Employees saw that if they were right-handed, their task sheet was to be
placed on the lower right-hand corner of their desktop. Other supplies, like
staplers, forms and personal items, were assigned to specific drawers. Mr.
Reuning walked around like a drill sergeant, at times erupting over sloppy
desk-keeping. He raked his thick arms across such desktops and pulled out
drawers -- dumping everything on the floor.
"Steve was kind of a lunatic," says longtime employee Greg Foss.
Mr. Reuning put in 80-hour weeks and built his social life around Diedre
Moire. The staff partied hard, at one point running up a $16,000 bar tab at
Hot Rod's, a New York nightclub.
One night in the summer of 1988, Mr. Reuning was awakened by a phone call
from a Delaware state trooper. His brother had been found dead in a hotel
room. The police ruled it a suicide.
'The Kinder, Gentler Steve'
Shaken, Mr. Reuning decided to scale back his hours. "My life was out of
balance," he says. At the office, he instituted more structured training. He
introduced the longhand scripting requirements. He became "the kinder,
gentler Steve," Mr. Foss says.
Still, his requirements remain daunting. The Standard Operating Protocol
covers 12 chapters. Employees must copy each chapter three times, and turn
in their copies every three weeks. Early on, this takes as long as two hours
a night.
That has been quite a jolt for Tom Pisano, 22, who arrived at Diedre Moire
this summer -- after a year of helping run snowboard competitions -- and
quickly fell behind on his copying. As his first copy deadline approached,
he pulled an all-nighter at the office. The next morning, his supervisor,
Larry Chiaravallo, took one look at all the empty coffee cups in Mr.
Pisano's cubicle and changed his schedule. Mr. Pisano now delivers his
scriptings in smaller increments -- every three days. He has a bright
future, his supervisors say, if he can just learn to discipline himself.
Employees do have some freedoms, as addressed in the seventh of the firm's
28 guiding principles: "All procedures and processes are executed after
objectives are clearly defined. ... While plenty of 'Designed and
Documented' experimentation is encouraged, 'Seat of the Pants' execution is
unacceptable."
Mr. Reuning says he has also learned to resist allowing details to control
him. Seven years ago, a minor office renovation left a patch of exposed
drywall where there should have been wallpaper. He's never made it a
concern, Mr. Reuning says, explaining: "Wallpaper is not performing an
objective that I need to achieve."
Write to Dan Morse at dan.morse@wsj.com |
