Following Dad

Dec. 21, 2004

Being an insider is a plus, says founder's son.

The market challenge alone for John Kahl, CEO of Manco Inc. for less than three months, is sticky enough. He must sustain impressive U.S. sales growth while introducing more foreign consumers to the company's Duck Tape-brand duct tape and Loctite adhesive products. But, if he follows the counsel of several management experts, he also must put his own leadership logo on a $292 million manufacturing firm founded and led for 30 years by a legend, his father Jack Kahl. However, unlike Jack Welch at GE two decades ago, John Kahl has no desire to alter the basic culture at Manco, a 560-employee firm based in Avon, Ohio. His job, he says, is to continue to balance the interests of customers and employees, producing the best value for both while generating a return for the company. "My father did a great job of that. I had three or four years [as COO] to sharpen my skills . . . and I think the consistency . . . is going to be a big plus going forward," Kahl states. "I'm not coming into an environment that is broken. I'm coming into an environment that is working very well." Indeed, the company, a unit of Germany's Henkel KGaA since 1998, has been growing at a 15% compound annual rate. Kahl considers being an insider-he started as a Manco route salesperson 15 years ago-to be a management plus. "I'm not out there headhunting, looking to replace five guys at the top of the company with my cronies." Nevertheless, as Manco competes with companies such as 3M Co. for such customers as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Ace Hardware Corp., and Lowe's Companies Inc., Kahl foresees a 25% increase in the amount of time that the business will demand of him. And he's concerned about also dedicating "a portion" of his life to his wife and two small children. "That's the part that keeps me awake" at night, Kahl says.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.