What was your best boss like?

I’ve had the fortune of working for not only some very excellent bosses throughout my career but also the companies themselves.  The relatively few moments I spent in malfunctioning companies made me appreciate how building an organization that is morally rich is really hard but the benefits to its employees and customers are enormous.  You’re engaged, excited to start another day at work, and know you make a real difference.  These companies listen more than they talk, push decision-making down to the people that know best, and never push their responsibilities or blame on others.  My best bosses exemplified these attributes.  

Most of the CIOs I reported to did not have technical backgrounds but understood it well enough to make good decisions.  The CIOs that did understand Information Technology knew they weren’t the experts but recognized when the experts did not appreciate the bigger picture.  Their biggest value was knowing the right people throughout senior leadership, what was important to them, cultivating relationships, and understanding the politics.  This was critical as the 1980s and 1990s were filled with centralizing data centers, consolidating software, and combining staff to reduce costs.   Standardizing the technology enabled the organization to work together instead of being siloed.  Imagine a corporation with a dozen email systems, multiple domain names, and then trying to sync it all together.  Companies with good CIOs brought email and many other disparate technologies stacks together more quickly and they benefitted sooner.

The best bosses are easy to recognize.  They are the ones that you remain in contact with and look forward to the next time together.  Friends for life.

What is the longest project you have ever worked on?

Mead Corporation’s implementation of the SAP ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system began in the year 2000 with a four-year timeline and a $125 million budget.  Mead had looked at ERP systems a couple of times earlier in the 1990s and decided then that the company wasn’t culturally ready for a single, process-oriented system like SAP.  But late in the 1990s, multiple divisions began requesting funds to implement their own ERPs, different ones, of course, and corporate had already purchased an ERP called PeopleSoft, so another look was taken and SAP was the ultimate decision.

The key focus of the project was change management, from executive management to division leadership to the employees that would transact in SAP every day.  Four years is not a long time to implement a $4 billion company and executives tend to lose their enthusiasm towards the end.  To jumpstart the project, a preconfigured SAP system was purchased from Monsanto, the chemical company, which was also in a continuous process manufacturing business.  Eighty percent of what Monsanto configured for “Source and Support” processes, for example, accounting, finance, and purchasing was adopted by Mead and led to the first implementation only nine months after the project launched.  That implementation was at the Coated Board division, selected because it produced paper, a critical proving ground to show that SAP would work in our core paper businesses, but also less risky than the larger and more complex white paper business.  After implementing Source & Support, the project would follow up a few months later with the “Order Management” processes, for example, accepting orders, manufacturing and shipping the products, and collecting money.  All this was supported by process training, local expert (“Super Users”) training, and finally just-in-time end-user training.  We were within a year of finishing the project when the MeadWestvaco merger occurred, extending the timeline a couple of years, but at that time I took on the newly-created Chief Technology Officer role, and while still involved, I was no longer officially on the project.

My role during the project was the SAP Technology Director, having the BASIS, ABAP, and Data teams reporting to me, and I reported to the Vice-President in charge of the SAP project with a dotted-line reporting relationship to the CIO, my previous manager.  The BASIS team was responsible for the installation and support of the core SAP software, the ABAP team wrote programs, interfaces, and reports for the team, and the Data team extracted, cleansed, and loaded data from legacy applications into SAP.  I worked a lot with the I.T. organization and to meet the project’s aggressive timeline we had to use what we knew best, IBM mainframes, the DB2 database management system (DBMS), and Windows servers.  The “usual” technology stack back then was an Oracle DBMS on large UNIX servers, but we had almost nobody on staff familiar with those, much less an expert.  To support the large DB2 virtual memory requirement for SAP, Mead bought three of the first 64-bit mainframes that IBM rolled off their production line, and while that was a somewhat risky move, we encountered only a few manageable issues.  We had to figure out how to manage an application with over 100,000 tables and indexes.  We had to move to an integrated, once-a-month, four-hour data center outage, perhaps the most difficult change management effort.  We had to create real-time, queued, and batch integration architectures and address locking and performance issues.  

It was a very energy-filled, fast-paced, and continually challenging project which resulted in lots of great memories and lasting relationships.  

 

What do you consider one of your greatest achievements in life?

Completing the 1985 Nationwide/Bank One Marathon in Columbus, Ohio stands above the rest.  While my time of three hours, fifty minutes, and 22 seconds is nowhere close to being great, it put me at 177th place in the group of 509 men in the 30-34 age group, almost to the top third in the field.  

The marathon is the only running event where I would stand at the starting line and wonder if I would complete the race today.  The question at the beginning of half-marathons or shorter races was how long would it take me to finish.  I attempted three marathons in my early thirties and only completed the 1985 start.  The other two I stopped around seventeen miles due to physical problems.  The first “failure” was due to improper running shorts causing a chafing issue.  The other one was knee pain that was bad enough to make me worry if continuing to run would cause permanent damage.  But in all three races, I was in great physical condition and had the super-low body-mass index of a marathoner.  But a marathon, as I learned the tough way, is just as much a test of mental toughness as it is being in shape.

The 1985 race was ideal for me.  The temperature began in the upper 60s and rose steadily to the upper 70s.  While most people would like it at least ten degrees cooler, I’ve always liked the warmer weather.  I think my muscles like being warm and staying loose.  The race started out in the usual fashion, the singing of the national anthem, the single gunshot, and waiting until the pack in front started to move.  First a walk, then a slow jog, and as the pack spread apart, into race pace.  Like me, the other middle-of-the-pack runners knew we needed to “take it easy” for the first half of the race, and on this day, that was a pace of around 7:15 per mile, which at the halfway mark I knew was a mistake and that’s when the mental toughness had to take over.  For the next seven miles, I had to run at a much-reduced pace, walk and drink a full cup of water at every opportunity.  When I hit the 17-mile mark and the course turned east away from downtown Columbus, I had to push through the desire to call it quits.  But at the 20-mile sign, when I realized that I had “only” 6.2 miles to go, the length of a 10K race, I knew I could make it and the doubts were lifted.  While I continued to run cautiously, noting multiple runners pulling up with leg cramps from dehydration, I didn’t walk the rest of the way.  Each mile crept by as I tried to run as smoothly as possible.  Finally, the finish line was in sight.  Unlike the shorter races, I had no final kick at the end.  More than just wanting not to cramp up, I was out of gas.  But as I crossed the finish line, and out of nowhere, I jumped as high as I could and pumped my fist in victory.  As I was suspended in the air, I realized that this was probably the dumbest thing I could have done and prayed that my legs wouldn’t buckle or a hamstring pop on landing.  As my feet made contact with the ground I felt muscles on the edge of failure, but they held.  I felt like I had run my entire life and this was the first time I ever stopped.  I also realized that “I did it” and that could never be taken away from me.  

This achievement took it all.  Many months of training, usually alone, with many runs of sixteen or more miles, in the cold of winter and the heat of summer.  Overcoming the doubts, pushing through the countless exhausting training runs, and getting back out there the next day to do it again.  That just gets you to the starting line.  The battle has just begun.  You have to give it everything, head to toe, to claim victory.  I did that once.  Can’t take it from me.

Do you have any notable ancestors?

To the world at large, none of my ancestors have done anything that I’m aware of that would be notable in any famous sense.  However, to me personally, a few stand out for their bravery, skills, and traits that ended up being very much a part of me and who I became.  

The two that were most impactful were my great-great-grandfather Franz Heinrich Moorman and my great-grandfather Eugene Adelbert Otto.  Both immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1800s and I admire that they, like many other European immigrants, decided to leave their parents, siblings, and homeland, most likely never to see them again, and make the dangerous 4,000+ mile trip to the United States.  People often say that I’m lucky to live in the United States, but the reality is that these two Germans are the reason I live here.  Their dream became my reality and the reason I speak English instead of German.

The majority of my Moorman side were farmers.  They settled and many continue to live in Mercer County cities such as Coldwater, Maria Stein, and St. Henry located about eighty miles north of Dayton.  I might have been a country boy if not for my grandfather Leo Albinus Moorman, who came to Dayton for a job working in the management dining room of John H. Patterson, the founder of NCR.  He moved just before the Great Flood of 1913 and my Uncle Ray recalls that he always talked about how NCR built boats to rescue people from the flood.  Sadly, the only memory I have of Grandpa Leo was as a five-year-old watching him laying on a bed in the living room of his west Dayton house on Lookout Avenue during the last months of his life.

When I was a little boy I had a passion for baking which my mother was very nice to let me explore.  What I would not find out until much later in life is that my Otto ancestors, back to the mid-1500s, were bakers, so perhaps I am genetically inclined to get out the flour from time to time.  Among the favorites I make are homemade pie dough, bread dough, pizza dough, and challah bread.  One of my cousins, Gene Otto, opened a bakery/coffee shop in Olympia, Washington, making our ancestor’s passion his everyday work.

One of the break-the-ice lines I use when starting a speech is “I’m the son of two actors, an engineer, and a cheerleader.  Obviously, both my parents were actors and that’s how they met, but if you think my Dad was the engineer and my mother the cheerleader, you’re wrong.  My Dad was both.”  My Dad was a cheerleader at The University of Dayton where he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.  Mom was an accountant and aspiring actress.  They met at The Dayton Blackfriars’ Guild, married in 1950, and continued their acting passion for about another ten years, even including me for a potential part as a ring bearer in one of the plays.  It was many, many years later that I realized that they were the reason I like to talk in front of an audience.  I am an actor at heart.  Only my brother Martin took acting to the same level as our parents, performing in local theatre groups.  But our other brothers, Greg and Dave, don’t shy away from public speaking or performing.  It’s in our blood.

 

What is one of the most beautiful places you've ever been?

I’ve often said that the three most beautiful places are mountains, beaches, and golf courses, with the most beautiful place I’ve ever been capturing all three. The runner-ups, just the most notable of a very long list, include golfing at Pebble Beach, sailing in St. Marteen’s Great Bay, dinner at the Flagstaff restaurant in the mountains overlooking Boulder, Colorado at dusk, and standing at the highest point of the Alta ski resort, southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, gazing at the slopes below. In each case, I had to pause, take in the scenery and commit it to memory. The place that takes the top spot is playing golf at the Wailea Golf Club on Maui. The course is built on the side of a mountain with majestic views of a deep blue Pacific Ocean. It boasts beautifully manicured fairways and greens and a layout that demands you concentrate fully to play a good round. I remember how hard it was to focus, the vistas compelling me to gaze upon them and ignore the golf. I don’t remember what my score ended up being, but the views will last forever.

What have been some of your life's greatest surprises?

My earliest memory of a great surprise was my grandfather Maurice Otto taking me to Arby’s on Salem Avenue.  There may have been my Mom or another sibling or two there, but all I remember was the gigantic Arby’s sign shaped like a cowboy hat and how amazingly delicious the roast beef sandwich tasted.  Not that my family ate out a lot or favored fast food, but I knew enough to be shocked at the taste.  It’s still my favorite fast food sandwich to this day.

My first trip to the Hawaiian island of Maui was full of the beautiful ocean and mountain scenery I was expecting, but the shocker was the awesome aromas of the resort.  I remember walking out of the hotel room the first morning and experiencing the fragrance of bananas wafting through the air.  Everywhere I went whatever tropical fruit trees were planted imparted their essences into the air.  Nowhere else I’ve ever been has matched that aromatic scenery. 

I walked into yet another Information Technology Leadership Team meeting in the summer of 2001 and I was the last one to join.  The buzz in the room was unusually busy and my colleagues began asking me what I thought.  “Thought of what?”, I replied.  “The merger, of course”, they explained, not really explaining anything.  I was the last one on the team to learn that Mead and Westvaco were merging and I was dumbfounded, my safe little world all of the sudden filled with questions and unknowns.  That began a crazy seventeen-year stretch of changing companies and managers that, in the end, worked out very well for me.  

The Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany was a bucket list item we knocked off the list in 2011.  We did the usual combination of a two-hour nap after arriving at the hotel after the overnight flight, followed by a walk, dinner, and back to bed for a long night’s sleep at 8 pm.  Waking up refreshed and settled into the GMT+2 hour time zone, we headed to the train station to take the short trip to Oktoberfest.  We knew we needed to exit at “Theresienwiese", but did not have further directions.  We just figured we follow the crowd, many dressed in traditional lederhosen or dirndl dresses, but as we exited the escalator we were shocked to see we were already inside Oktoberfest, the beer tents, rides, food vendors, and shops right in front of us.  It took a few minutes to soak it in before we set off exploring.

When I retired in August of 2018, the folks in the office gave me a nice send-off and I was focused on my life’s next journey, one not filled with alarm clocks and deadlines.  My wife scheduled a little retirement party a few weeks later and drove me blindfolded to the destination, which turned out to be Jimmy’s Ladder 11.  Maybe that should have tipped me off that something was going on, but when they walked me up to the second-floor party room, I was truly shocked, to the point of tears, to see so many of the people I worked with over the years there to greet me and wish me a happy retirement.

We hold an annual summer party, inviting around two dozen people for a late afternoon cookout, their favorite beverages, and conversation well into the darkness.  I was deep in conversation with friends during the 2021 party when my daughter Laurie and her husband Rodney, now residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, walked over to me.  I looked up, and while I certainly recognized them, my brain initially rejected what I was obviously seeing, seizing up for a couple of seconds before realizing they had made the seven-hour trip to surprise me.  And an absolutely wonderful surprise it was!

Has anyone ever rescued you, figuratively or literally?

I credit Dr. Zimmer, my long-time chiropractor, for rescuing me from severe pain, one of the two miracles in my life.  During a vacation in California, I threw my back out and spent an agonizing day laying in bed, barely able to roll over.  It was the day before returning home and the next morning things were no better and I realized I could never make it down the stairs, drive the car to the airport or tolerate a four-hour plane ride to Ohio.  As I laid there trying to figure out what to do, I thought about the position Dr. Zimmer sometimes puts me in while adjusting my back, that being laying on my side, bottom leg extended, the top of my foot on the other leg tucked up behind my knee, and turning my shoulders in the opposite direction.  This position forces my lower back to push forward.  I assumed that position and laid there for forty-five minutes.  Then I got up, all pain gone, carried two suitcases down the stairs, drove to the airport, and flew home.  Dr. Zimmer, plus some divine intervention, gets the credit for my California rescue.

The Department of Justice gets some credit, along with a pair of CIOs, for a substantial financial rescue late in my career.  I was on track to retire when I turned sixty-six and the house would be paid off.  But then Verso attempted to buy NewPage and become a much larger paper company.  The DOJ stepped in to evaluate their anti-trust concerns and this dragged the acquisition out for about a year.  Needing to retain talent, a few individuals, including myself, were offered a nice chunk of money to stay around.  Finally, the DOJ decided that NewPage/Verso would have to sell two paper mills before they approved the merger, and Catalyst Paper bought the Rumford, Maine and Biron, Wisconsin mills and was allowed to select people from the Dayton Head Office to staff the I.T., customer service, logistics, and other head office requirements.  I joined Catalyst Paper at that point and was given a nice signing bonus to make sure I stayed around a while.  Thanks to the DOJ for helping pay off the house early and allowing me to retire over three years early!

The only actual save-my-life rescue moment I know is through a story told to me later in life.  I was probably three or four years old when my parents walked me toward the deeper end of the pool at the Trotwood Aquatic Club.  They didn’t realize how short I was and before long I was completely submerged.  Someone, their identity I don’t recall, got my parent’s attention and they yanked me up and out of the water, allowing me to breathe again.  Some things in life should happen before you get old enough to remember, and I’m happy this is one of them.