The Beauty of the Vox Populi
The first time I heard the name "Robert Moses" was in Jane Jacobs' incredible The Death and Life of Great American Cities a book I had to read before beginning my (brief) architecture studies in college. In it, Moses is rightfully pegged as the antagonist - a racist and "rationalist" whose crusade of urban renewal destroyed neighborhoods, further marginalized wide swaths of New York City's population, and focused so acutely on the use of automobiles that he bulldozed anything that stood in their way.
The second time Robert Moses came into my life was through my friend and New York City-based urban planner, Adam Benditsky. He carried Robert A. Caro's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York with him for months as he carved through the boulder-like tome as if it were scripture. Benditsky would spout off facts and information about Moses and his lingering effects on the city and ultimately found the man to be audacious, brazen, malicious, and horrific.
But, truthfully, I'd known of Robert Moses – or, at least, his works – since childhood during trips into New York City to visit with my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Our car would dive through the canyons of the Cross Bronx Expressway en route into Manhattan from Connecticut. We'd watch Mets games from the plastic seats of Shea Stadium, and poured through the Lincoln Center archives for pictures of my grandmother as a member of the New York City Ballet. Whether we wanted him to or not, Moses left an indelible mark upon the city and all who visited it.
Robert Moses cut expressways through low-income neighborhoods without regard for the inhabitants. He created easier means for middle-class white people to move about the city, while stepping over minorities and how they utilized public transportation to get around. He tore down historic buildings in order to place steel and concrete spiderwebs of off- and on-ramps and highways without so much as a care for the people who lived there. Ultimately, he wielded his unlimited power to fashion the city into the way he thought it should be, like a god moving bulldozers in the pursuit of a city of the future, but so far distanced from reality that all he did was cause pain. Some forty years after Robert Moses' death from heart disease, New York City is still trying to undo the mistakes he made.
And while time has not been kind to Robert Moses and his many public works, he did some good. My favorite park in the city, Riverside Park, was greatly improved once he spearheaded placing rail lines under the park rather than through it. He was a major factor in encouraging the United Nations to build their headquarters on a plot of land along the East River. Moses was also instrumental in the creation of over 20,000 acres of public parkland throughout the city.
But Robert Moses' biggest failure, the one that kept him from being a truly remarkable urban planner with the city's best interests and successes at heart was simple: he never listened to the common people. In her book, Jane Jacobs takes him to task for this - his disregard for the little people. He saw things from such a high view that he never took into account how these changes would affect the citizens on the ground - what's best for the city is not always what's best for its citizens.
I have seen these mistakes throughout my professional career. I've witnessed advertising firms crumble due to top-heavy management shifts that never listened to the pulse of their employees. I've watched investments sour because C-suite executives painted a much rosier picture of their operations than the day-to-day experiences their lower-level workers encountered. And, I've observed products fail because headstrong inventors never stopped to ask what it was that the public really wanted. One need not look further than Theranos under Elizabeth Holme’s leadership to see how the lack of understanding (or, really, care) for junior employees contributed to that companies demise.
In private equity, it's imperative that we get a full understanding of a company's revenues, their debts, and their expenses. But it's equally important to understand the company from the bottom up. We need to speak to everyone and build a holistic picture of the company. The issues facing C-suite executives are far different than the issues experienced by the employees working in factories, warehouses, and transportation.
Where are logistics failing? What holes need to be closed? What's the culture of the company like? What questions would you like to ask management? How would you do things differently and more effectively?
A conversation with a group of hourly employees will not only fill in blank spaces, but will make you aware of issues that the management team couldn't possibly know. (ex: the forklifts require longer charging times than originally thought, the sorting machine would be easier to use if it were placed here, this adhesive hardens too quickly, etc...)
Further, because these employees are in the thick of it each day, they will surely develop ways to perform their jobs better, and have ideas around operational efficiencies. My first summer job was working for a commercial painting company. On day one, my foreman showed me that each paint can has a wet side and a dry side. "Only scrape your brush on one side of the can and always hold it away from you." He was right. It made clean-up easier, kept me from getting excess paint on my clothes, and ultimately made me a more efficient painter.
The crux of every private equity firm, no matter how big or small, is to create additional value in their portfolio companies. There are a myriad of ways to do this, but one of the main ways is through operational improvements. And while management teams may have ideas around how to do this, it's the "boots on the ground" employees who will know how best to put these methods into practice.
Robert Moses could have done amazing things. He could have changed the face of New York City in ways that benefited all of its citizens, not just those from higher tax brackets. But his failure to speak to lower-income neighborhoods and create a broader picture of the needs and wants of New Yorkers ultimately resulted in scars that tear through the very foundations of the Big Apple.
Private equity firms and investors can learn a thing or two from Robert Moses. Listen to the employees. Understand their needs. Recognize how they'd improve things and create operational efficiencies. And, by all means, don't speak solely with the management team. After all, what's best for the company may not always be what's best for its employees, and the last thing an investor wants is to watch a company crumble from within.
