The Sekisui Kydex Story

Sekisui Kydex is a major producer of colored thermoplastics for the medical and transportation industries. An example of one of its products is the fold-down tray tables on aircraft. In 1991, the company, originally named Kydex, ran into financial problems and was sold to the Japanese conglomerate Sekisui Chemical. Known for its innovative technology, Kydex had struggled selling its products. When it was sold to Sekisui, sales were 22 million dollars. Today, the company’s sales have grown to over 100 million dollars.

Ronn Cort was hired in 2005 to grow the company’s international business. He and his sales team were so successful that they created a challenge for the company to keep up with production to meet what they had sold. Recognizing his value to the company, the Japanese owners asked Cort to become the company’s president. They liked Cort’s aggressiveness and loyalty to the company. 

Cort, knowing little about the manufacturing side of the company, delayed his response, asking first for the opportunity to learn the operations part of the business. He spent the next six months at the company’s manufacturing plant in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.  

In describing his approach to business prior to his relocation to the Bloomsburg plant, Cort described himself as a hard-driving, results-oriented sales executive who had little empathy for the “ordinary” people who worked for the company. He was comfortable with top-down decisions, which fit his dominant style of management.

However, six months at the Bloomsburg plant left an indelible mark on Cort. What he observed was 130 employees being treated poorly by the plant management. He heard horror stories from manufacturing workers, which struck a nerve with him. When asked what had created this change in him, he gave two responses. The first was his reflection of how he felt about the leaders he had worked for. These reflections led him to what he called the “anti-model of leadership,” avoiding the behaviors that made him feel bad. The second was the recollection from his appearance at his son’s career day at school where he was expected to talk about his job and why it was important. Other parents before him talked about purpose, like a physician curing disease and saving lives. He, on the other hand, found himself embarrassed to described what he sold as “colored plastic rectangles.” He admitted he had never given much thought to how his company products contributed to the greater good of society. 

The tensions created by these events led to a complete transformation in him, perhaps a calling, and the realization that if he were to become president, he was going to lead his company in a totally different way. His leadership would be based on a strong sense of purpose and an appreciation and respect for every worker in the company. 

Six months after his assignment in Bloomsburg, Cort accepted the company’s presidency. One of the first changes he made was to revamp the organizational chart, placing himself at the bottom and producers of the product and employees who dealt with customers toward the top. When asked how he arrived at this radical departure from the authoritarian leadership of his predecessors, he told the story of a leadership coach who challenged him with a question. Asked how many customers he had and how well he knew them, Cort talked with pride about serving 1,400 customers and knowing each of them, their preferences, and even knowledge about their families. His coach quickly reframed the role of president by suggesting that, as president, he would only have 130 customers to get to know and work with. It did not take long for Cort to translate this into a leadership philosophy akin to servant leadership.

Cort saw his leadership role as providing resources, removing obstacles, and creating a healthy work environment for those who produced and sold the company products. He asked each employee to write his or her own job description, building trust through listening and aligning each employee with management through mutually agreed-upon goals and committing leadership to help them accomplish their goals. He removed toxic managers and encouraged his remaining managers to coach and serve, not direct and control. In short time, he was able to transform the toxic culture he inherited to a healthy culture built on trust, alignment, and a strong sense of purpose that energized workers. He committed to them, and they reciprocated by improving productivity year after year.  

Realizing that people did not know how to change, Cort implemented several programs to provide direction. He created voter kiosks for workers to record noble acts. These acts were rewarded by making donations to employee causes. Understanding that people change at different rates, coaching was provided to help employees deal with change. At the same time, employees in leadership roles who could not live up to the new culture were asked to leave. This was sometimes painful because some of these “leaders” were strong producers.  

Asked what in his past led him toward the path of servant leadership, Cort attributed much of the credit to his father, who climbed the ladder of success from blue collar worker to management.  As a manager, his father was able to empathize with workers and understand their issues. This impressed his son, who saw the conversion of a highly prejudiced worker who complained about how badly workers were treated by management to a leader who respected workers and treated them with dignity.

The fruits of culture change were a steady increase in sales, productivity, profits, and corporate responsibility. Employee attitudes shifted from “needing a job” to “enjoying my work.”  

The pandemic in 2020 was a major blow to the demand for Kydex products. Air travel and the demand for the products the company supplied to the aircraft industry were hard hit, leading to substantially lower sales. The company, which has never had a layoff, will face a dilemma as it will need to deal with this problem. The company is very conscious of the human cost of layoffs and is looking for ways to mitigate the emotional and financial damage caused by them.

Japanese-owned companies in the US are known for safety, quality, and processes to obtain productivity. Sekisui  Kydex has added another dimension to success by providing a healthy culture for its workforce. The results speak for themselves.