LEADERSHIP CORNER
PR agency's CEO believes in workplace as community
Interviewed by David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer
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Age: 51
Title: CEO, creative director & co-founder
Company: Patrice Tanaka & Co., a New York-based PR agency with 45 employees and $6 million in annual sales.
High school: Castle
College: University of Hawai'i, B.A. in journalism
Breakthrough job: Led a management buyback of the small PR firm where she was employed in 1990.
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Q. You've said when you went to New York in 1979 you were trying to get away from the "too close community in Hawai'i" where people "pretend to get along." Do you still view Hawai'i that way?
A. I think I appreciate (Hawai'i) more from afar and many years behind me. I appreciate the value of a close knit community and the support that provides to an individual. (At the time, Hawai'i) felt suffocating.
I was born and raised there, so I never appreciated it as something special, or something that I should value. It was only when I didn't have that and moved to New York that I realized: Oh, my God, where is my community? Where are the people who care if I'm out late or need help?
Q. If you were to talk to people in Hawai'i now who are considering moving to the Mainland to break out of the close knit community, what would you say to them?
A. I would say it's good that you are leaving the nest. Sometimes you have to do that to fully spread your wings and see how high you can fly. It's not always possible to do that by staying in the nest. It's so comfortable in Hawai'i. It's good that you are going away.
Q. You've said that your first boss in New York was selfish and uncaring, but you stayed there for eight years. Why did you stay so long?
A. Perseverance was one of the 10 themes that I learned from my mother (June Tanaka). You shouldn't quit before you achieve what you set out to achieve. It's easy to quit. A lot of people quit. But the people who succeed are the ones who see it through to the end. I'm somebody who doesn't quit. And frankly my success is based primarily on my tenacity and perseverance. I can outlast most other people. It's not because I'm smarter or better or more talented. It's because I can persevere.
Everything is a lesson in life. I learned the kind of boss I wanted to be by having an anti-role model. Seeing her in action, there were so many times when I said, 'If I ever have my own company, I will do exactly the opposite.'
Of course while I was putting up with it for eight years I was resentful and angry and frustrated and only with years distance from that period can I truly appreciate that experience for what it was.
Q. In 2001 when times were tough at your company, you cut salaries to avoid laying off people. Did you cut the salaries of the partners as well as the employees?
A. We asked our employees to take a 10 percent pay reduction and they did for a 10-month period. We restored their reduction on Nov. 1 of last year. But partners were asked to take twice that, 20 percent, which has still not yet been restored.
Q, That is so different from what many CEOs are doing these days.
A. I know. It's part of our workplace-as-community ethos, putting the needs of the group ahead of any one individual's need, so that we can keep the group together.
Q. Why don't more companies do that?
A. I think people are coming at it from a different perspective. I can't get excited about money as the end goal. My focus has been about workplace community. I always think it is the quality of the life experience, not just who has the most toys at the end of the day.
It is about being able to work with people you respect and love and admire. The six of us who co-own the agency have worked together at least 15 years, which is really unheard of in agency life because it's a revolving-door industry. You are only as secure as the account you work on. I think that is a terrible way to judge somebody's worth in business and life.
Q. If you hadn't cut salaries how many of your 45 employees would you have had to lay off?
A. I don't know. We started doing the numbers and it just became so painful to think about the people, the individuals, forget about the numbers. That was just not an option. I think we would have probably had to cut maybe 25 percent of our workforce. It's a huge number.
Q. Do you respect companies that are all about making money for the investors?
A. I respect that America is a capitalist society and that is part of our greatness and our weakness. I don't judge what other people do. I just have to do what is right for me.
Q. You said that the silver lining of 9-11 was people recommitting themselves to community and family. Is that still true now that it's been almost two years since the attack?
A. I think Americans have this inability to sustain any single emotion for any period of time. (Still) there is some residual understanding and appreciation of the ephemeral nature of life. If you're not making the most of every moment that you are living, then you are probably not approaching life in the right way. Those 3,000 people that went into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, I don't think any of them thought this is my last day on earth. You have to have joy every day. It can't be something that is postponed for a later time for when you have more money or more leisure time or you are in a better mood.
My purpose in life is to have joy in my life every single day. What I have done every day since February 2002 is I ask for tremendous joy in my life. Before I go to bed every day, I literally count all the joyful episodes of the day, so that I can re-enforce and remember that I had a lot of joy today. I'm on a streak. It's anywhere between 8 and 12 episodes a day.
What happens with a lot of people is somebody asks you at the end of your day, 'How was your day, honey?' And the thing that is the most prominent is usually something that is the most painful thing. And then you go on a jag, telling this person, 'Oh, can you believe so and so said this.' And then you are reliving this painful thing. If you do it every day, you can convince yourself that life is totally joyless. Which I refuse to do because there is too much joy to be had and too much joy that goes unaccounted for.
Q. You work in a very competitive industry. Do you ever have cases where a competitor jumps in and grabs an account from you in an unscrupulous way and then you question your sharing/giving principles?
A. No. If they can live with themselves by doing that, that's their life. As long as I can look myself in the mirror and feel that I did something in an honorable way, that's all I'm responsible for.
It's very competitive, yes, but in the same way as an exciting board game. ... Not that we take our work lightly — we don't.
