[nukkad] CEO Reveals Secret

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The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of his tail. 
-Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, educator, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)
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CEO Reveals Secret 

 For decades, Jay Thiessens hid a painful secret as he
built his machine and tool  company from a mom-and-pop
operation into a $5 million-a-year enterprise.
 During the day he hid behind the role of a harried
businessman, too busy to review  contracts or shuffle
through mail. At night, his wife, Bonnie, would help
him sort  through the paperwork at the kitchen table,
in the living room, or sometimes sitting
 up in bed. 

 Other tasks he delegated to a core group of managers
at B&J Machine Tool Co.  who had no idea their boss
couldn't read. 

 "I worked for him for seven years and I had no clue,"
said Jack Sala, now the  engineering manager for
Truckee Precision, a B&J competitor. "I was his
general
 manager. He would bring legal stuff to me and say,
'You're better at legalese than
 me.' I never knew I was the only one reading them." 

 Few people knew of his shame and most burning desire:
To be able to read a  simple bedtime story to his
grandchildren. But he couldn't keep his illiteracy
secret  forever. "It became too hard to continue to
hide it," said Thiessens, who has begun
 to read at the age of 56. "Since I made the decision
to let everybody know, it's a  big relief." 

 On Wednesday, Thiessens will be honored in
Washington, D.C., as one of six  national winners of
the 1999 National Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative
Award.
 Sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
MassMutual, the award  recognizes small businesses
that have triumphed over adversity. 

 Thiessens' torment took root when he was in the first
or second grade in McGill, a  small mining town in
central Nevada. "A teacher called me stupid because I
had  trouble reading," he said. All through school, he
was the quiet little boy in the back  of the room. 

 "I think the teachers just got tired of looking at me
so they passed me on," he said.

 He graduated from White Pine High School in Ely 1963,
getting mostly C's, D's  and F's. He made the honor
roll once, in his senior  year when he landed A's in
auto mechanics and machine shop. 

 The day after graduation, Thiessens moved to Reno,
where 10 years later he  started a small machine shop
with his last $200. Today, B&J specializes in
 welding, machine parts and precision sheet metal
work. With 50 employees, the  company conducts $5
million a year in business and just broke ground on 
a new 54,000 square-foot expansion. 

Despite his success, the stigma of being labeled a
dummy haunted him through  adulthood. He compensated
by being a good listener. He rarely forgets details
and
 has a solid grasp of math and figures, a trait
essential to the industry, others say. 

 "The majority of everything we do is technical," said
Randy Arnett of A&B  Precision, B&J's longest
competitor. "It has more to do with math, geometrical
 shapes, than verbiage." 

 "He's always been a decent competitor," Arnett said
of Thiessens. 

 Two years ago, Thiessens was invited to join a local
chapter of The Executive  Committee, a kind of
CEO-support group where non-competing chief executives
 discuss business trials and tribulations in
confidence. 

 Thiessens was reluctant. "He was concerned he
wouldn't measure up to the rest of
 the group," said Randy Yost, committee chairman and
former CEO of Placer Bank  of Commerce in California.
"About 6 months after we met, he told me he had a 
reading problem," Yost said. "At that time, he was
very tight-vested about it." 

 Thiessens confessed to the rest of the group last
year. 

 "He was a little teary. His voice was shaking,"
recalled Doug Damon, a group  member and CEO of Damon
Industries, a beverage concentrate manufacturer. "It
 was clearly a difficult thing for him to do." Damon
was surprised by Thiessens  confession. "I knew he was
a high school graduate, and so I guess I automatically
 assumed he knew how to read. He'd been very
successful in his business. Who  would have thought?" 

 Thiessens feared titters and jeers from his
college-educated CEO peers. Instead, he  was
overwhelmed by support. "As much as I respected him
for what he
 accomplished, it enhanced my respect for him," Yost
said. 

 Last October, Thiessens found a tutor to instruct him
for an hour a day, five days  a week. That's also when
he told his plant managers. The rest of his employees
 found out last month. 

 Thiessens recently read "Gung Ho," a book on employee
relations, as a  management team project. It was slow
going as he underlined all the words he
 didn't know and later sought help with. But he
finished it. He wants someday to be
 able to rifle through mail as quickly as his wife and
"round file" the piles of junk  mail that comes across
his desk. 

 More importantly, he hopes his story will encourage
others to learn to read. 

 "There is no shame in not knowing how to read," said
Mrs. Thiessens, his wife of  37 years. "The shame is
not doing anything about it." 

 Sandra Chereb
 Associated Press Writer




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