The Fast Track

The Fast Track

LEADERSHIP by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Elaine Kaup has spent her entire life defying odds, both personal and business, including a meteoric rise to the top of the AT&T corporate food chain.

The story of Elaine Kaup - her first 52 years at least - is filled with so many inspirational chapters, it's tough to pick the most inspiring.

Maybe it's how she paid her own way through both high school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and college at Illinois State University. Jobs included the young entrepreneurial staples of selling Christmas cards door-to-door, delivering newspapers and pet-sitting. "I didn't spend summers kayaking and biking," says Kaup. "I spent my summers working."

Or it could be how she entered the prestigious fast-track corporate management program at then-behemoth phone company AT&T in 1976. Surviving the exclusive, grueling five-year program was tough enough, but Kaup came into it at a time when most other women employees were heard as operators, not seen as managers.

Then again, it could be how Kaup earned two business-related Master's degrees while running various AT&T departments, including one where a whopping 10,000 employees ultimately reported to her. The diplomas include one from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where she graduated with honors after being selected as a Sloan Fellow.

And save room for Kaup's most recent jaw-dropping inspiring accomplishment: She's going on almost two years of beating Stage III breast cancer, a disease Kaup says she attacked just as she would a business problem. She researched the best strategies, put together a plan of attack and executed it.

"I don't whine, I don't pout and I don't complain," Kaup says. "You either move out of the way or get rolled over by it."

Even if it was in her disposition, it's unlikely Kaup would complain, as she doesn't seem to have time. After two early retirements, one from AT&T and a second one from an executive position at the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, Kaup's most recent business venture is serving as a top-level executive for Sarasota-based SKY Sotheby's International Realty.

Technically, Kaup's title with SKY is vice president of operations, technology and human resources. But she was brought in essentially to use her past management experience to help the Sotheby's franchise manage its explosive growth: It currently has 56 agents, a 522% jump from 2004, when it first opened and had nine agents.

Ladies and gentlemen

Kaup's role at SKY is, on a smaller scale, similar to what one of her business role models, Jack Welch, has been doing since the management guru retired from General Electric: She's trying to meld the structure of a big company with the entrepreneurial spirit of a start-up, much like Welch's consulting business.

At SKY, that means creating procedures such as exit interviews, salary guides and job descriptions, programs the company's never had before. "We are not a mom and pop anymore," says Kaup, "but we still want to be boutique in the real estate market."

Kaup took the SKY assignment last summer, marking the second time she came out of retirement. The admitted workaholic, who has remained single all her life - sans what she calls her marriage to AT&T - has realized that down time and her personality don't mix well.

Instead, the Kaup mix is figuring out the delicate balance between the small stuff and the big picture.

JoAnn Patrick-Ezzell, a Sarasota resident who worked with and supervised Kaup at AT&T, describes Kaup simply as someone who gets it. That includes being thorough, articulate and, most importantly, someone who gets things done.

"She's the kind of person I can trust completely," Patrick-Ezzell says. "She has the highest level of integrity."

Kaup enrolled in the AT&T management program in 1976, and soon after marked 2001 as the year she'd like to retire - 25 years. Indeed, she stuck the plan and by late 2001, she had moved to Sarasota.

Restless, Kaup soon took a job at the then-new Ritz-Carlton in downtown Sarasota, running the business center. Her role there, like most other employees, was primarily to keep guests happy. She also was responsible for bringing in groups for meetings and figuring out ways to cut costs.

Kaup took the customer-first lessons she learned at AT&T to the Ritz, already known for top-shelf customer service. In four yeas, she received numerous service awards, including the company's prestigious Five Star Award.

The Ritz-Carlton experience was a significant lifestyle upgrade from Kaup's childhood. She grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, the daughter of a firefighter and a stay-at-home mom who also worked as a part-time X-ray technician.

Kaup would go on to become the first member of her family to go to college, where in addition to focusing on a business career, she played on the school's tennis and golf teams.

The small stuff

Going back to childhood, Kaup has always done everything at an ultra-fast pace, be it talking, fighting cancer or moving up in her career. The AT&T phase of her resume reads like the back of a well-traveled baseball player's card: The multiple areas she's worked in include San Francisco, suburban New York, Chicago (twice) and Cincinnati. Jobs included running the consumer information department, managing the sales and service employees and heading up the pre-paid services division.

Working for what was one of the biggest - and most highly regulated -American companies, says Kaup, was a constant lesson in process bureaucracy. On one side, she had access to some of the best people in any industry, including law, marketing and finance. But to get from planning to executing was a glacially slow process. "To move that ball," she says, "it was like moving the Titanic."

Still, Kaup succeed at AT&T by adapting her style. She harnessed her hyper-ness into a version of extreme multi-tasking. For example, in 1996, she was promoted to lead the company's nationwide efforts to open new call-centers. That covered managing the actual facilities, the technology to be utilized inside, and all levels of management and non-management staffing.

The staffing issue became her biggest challenge. First, borrowing from the standard rule of hiring people smarter than yourself, she brought on dozens of managers she could trust. The type, Kaup says, who could "manage the challenges before they became crises."

Then there was the guts of the call centers, the troops needed to work the phones. That was more of challenge from a standpoint of total volume - up to 1,000 employees were needed per facility - than from sheer qualifications. She paired down the sizeable applicant pool by fine-tuning an internal company screening process.

That assignment was one of many at AT&T where Kaup used her fast-paced approach to get things done. While she will continue using that approach at SKY, her recent cancer battle has taught her the life-lesson of slowing down to appreciate the small stuff.

On a recent drive through Texas with some relatives, for example, Kaup says she stopped to stare at the contrast of a red cardinal flying around the middle of brown fields. She also says she makes sure to do other little stuff, such as watching turtles sunning and the moon rising, things she says everyone should do.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Who. Elaine Kaup

Industry. Real Estate/Management

Key. A three-year old Sarasota luxury real estate firm going through start-up growing pains recently hired Kaup. She brings 25 years of AT&T executive management experience to the job.

Good Growth

Elaine Kaup has brought her 25 years of management and leadership lessons to SKY Sotheby's International Realty, a three-year old Sarasota luxury real estate firm going though a growth spurt. Here are some of her suggestions on how to manage growth:

• Mission Control: Be vigilant on sticking to the firm's mission, vision and values. Kaup recently led an effort at SKY to produce a glossy business card that details those three philosophies.

• Hiring 101: Leaders and CEOs must figure out ways to stay away from getting bogged down in the day-to-day details. "They need to champion working on the business," says Kaup, "not in the business." Start with hiring trusted people to run the daily parts.

• Open lines: Communicating with all employees is essential to good growth. Says Kaup: "A vibrant growing organization cannot over-communicate."

-Mark Gordon