Leadership Corner: Glenn Sexton
Interviewed by Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer
Name: Glenn Sexton
Age: 46
Title: Vice president and general manager
Organization: Xerox Hawaii
High school: Leilehua High School
College: Bachelor of arts in English, University of Hawai'i-Manoa
Breakthrough job: Working as a sales outreach manager for Xerox Corp. in California for two years. "Among other things, I learned a lot of new skills," Sexton said. "It was my first experience living outside Hawai'i and I came to appreciate Hawai'i even more. ... Caused me to want to come back."
Little-known fact: Sexton worked as a parking attendant at the building where Xerox Hawaii was formerly located. Some of the people he met from the company then still work at Xerox Hawaii.
Major challenge: "An ongoing challenge is that we're a multinational corporation, but we're also a local company," Sexton said. "To keep that balance and make sure we bring the best of those aspects and provide the best value to our customers, it's a challenge and opportunity. When it works right, we do a very, very good job. But to keep that balance is a challenge."
Hobbies: Spending time with his two children, surfing and snowskiing
Mentor: Wesley T. Park, former president and CEO of Hawai'i Dental Service, with whom he has lunch once a month. "He's a very wise man and he's been through a lot in his career," Sexton said. "He has great values and he's very centered."
Q. With Xerox Hawaii part of a multinational corporation based on the Mainland, how does the company maintain a unique identity in Hawai'i?
A. First of all, we've had a lot of stability in the job I have. People usually pass through and move on. I've chosen not to
do that. Our leadership staff is the same way. They have chosen to live and work in Hawai'i. So we make decisions for the
long term. Part of our responsibilities is to make sure Xerox Corp. understands the uniqueness of Hawai'i, its culture and market, and to make sure we are flexible enough to recognize those differences and diversity. We try to mold ourselves to provide the very best for our market.
Q. How is the Hawai'i market different from the Mainland market?
A. Preponderance of small business and relationships, we think, mean more here because they tend to last longer. Distance, in that a lot of the functions that are provided to our customers on the Mainland are centralized for cost efficiency. But our call center is here. We invested in that because we don't think someone in Canada will necessarily provide the best communication to our customers. So we try very hard to keep those resources here. ... We take a long-term view because we're here for the long term. We've been here since '64.
Q. Xerox Hawaii has endured some high-profile challenges during your tenure, including the 1999 shooting at the company's Nimitz Highway warehouse, where seven employees were killed. How was the company able to recover?
A. We were confronted by an enormous challenge very few organizations have ever confronted. We certainly lost a lot in that tragedy, not the least of which were seven fine people, not just employees, but human beings with families. That was a tragedy that's really impossible to put into words and I couldn't begin to describe it. As an organization we use the word 'family' here a lot, as a lot of organizations do. But here we really mean it. When you go through something like that as a family, it can either destroy you or make you stronger. I believe we've become stronger. We'll never forget what happened — it will always be something that will be a very big part of our lives and our family's lives. But we understood that at some point we had to move forward to heal.
Throughout that process, we have been very blessed with tremendous loyalty from our customers. From the day it occurred, over the months and years, to this point, our customers have been very supportive. I think in a way that's somewhat uniquely Hawai'i, and I'd like to think it's because we've done a good job and built a good relationship with our customers. But I think that from the day it happened, the flowers and cards that came to us, the people who worked here, to me personally, I'll always remember that.
Since then we have been one of the top performing Xerox organizations in the world consistently for the last five years. And I'm not just talking about revenues or the typical economic measures. I'm talking about customer satisfaction, which we measure very religiously, and employee satisfaction. I'm very proud of that. I'm proud of Xerox Hawaii. People have retired in the last few years, we've hired new people, change hurts. But I think we've become a better family, if that's even possible.
Q. How has the company — or its products and services — changed?
A. A few years ago a copier was thought of as a commodity and computers were not. ... Computers are now a commodity and a copier has ceased to exist. Now they're multifunctional devices, very sophisticated but also very cost-effective, which gets at both small and large business. ... This technology has more functions now. It's a single unit, thereby lowering costs and reducing space that's required and truly enables productivity for employees.
The other thing that's really changed at Xerox, which has affected us and truly enhances the value we provide, are the services we now offer. A lot of our customers outsource to us. For example, a bank may not want to worry about documents or hire people to deal with the storage and retrieval of documents. So it hires Xerox to take care of that. We hire the people, if necessary, we provide the technology on-site and whatever services are needed. A lot of folks still think of us as printing, but a lot of what we provide now has nothing to do with that. ... While we perhaps provided a limited set of solutions for customers in the past, now we can expand that. This is a very exciting part of our business.
Q. What are qualities leaders should possess?
A. There's a difference between managers and leaders. Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing. I always aspire to be someone who does the right thing right. It's always a goal.
