Babe Engineering Future at Bayer
By JOHN McCABEArticle Photos
ROBINSON TOWNSHIP, Pa. - Greg Babe knew in the sixth grade that he wanted to be an engineer. What he didn't know is that roughly 40 years later, he'd find himself as head of chemical and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer Corp.
Starting Wednesday, Babe, a New Martinsville native, will become Bayer Corp.'s first American-born president and chief executive officer. He assumes the duties left by the retiring Attila Molnar.
Bayer Corp., headquartered in Robinson Township, Pa., is the North American division of company parent Bayer AG, which is based in Leverkusen, Germany.
Babe currently serves as CEO of Bayer MaterialScience, the plastics and polymers division responsible for the company's site in New Martinsville and others in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. He will continue to oversee Bayer MaterialScience in his new post.
His latest appointment continues a path that has seen Babe move from a college student working for what was then known as Mobay Chemicals in 1976 to head of Bayer Corp.
He will oversee 17,000 employees - 15,500 in the U.S. and 1,500 in Canada - for a company that reported sales of nearly $12 billion last year in North America.
During a sit-down interview in his Robinson Township office, Babe, 51, discussed his new role and his goals for Bayer over the next five years, balancing work with life, the New Martinsville site, a grade school teacher who was his hero and his start into a career that has led him from his hometown to Germany and then back to the local region.
'Not quite a one-room
schoolhouse'
Babe grew up as one of five children of two hard-working parents, Glenn and Betty Babe. They lived on what he termed a "little rural road called Doolin Ridge," which is located about five miles from downtown New Martinsville near Proctor.
He said his childhood never included dreams of being a scientist. But an elementary school teacher changed his life forever.
Babe attended the former Grandview Elementary School near Proctor. It was there he got his push into the realm of science, crediting teacher Jim DeLuca for launching his imagination into overdrive.
"When I was growing up, teachers got their students excited about science," Babe said, noting that fewer and fewer of today's youth are entering the field. "Grandview Elementary was not quite a one-room schoolhouse, and in sixth grade we got these two new, young teachers. It was 1968 and I remember Jim DeLuca talking to us about the space program, and I was hooked. I knew then and there I wanted to be involved in science."
This fascination continued through his junior high and high school years at Magnolia High School.
Babe graduated from Magnolia in 1975 and received a football scholarship to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, enrolling as an engineering student.
He only played football for a year, however, as he realized the practice demands would conflict with his goal to be an engineer.
"At Virginia Tech, I decided my priority was in engineering and decided that the time commitment for football was more than most engineers could manage. I gave up my scholarship and start working for Mobay to pay for my college education," Babe said.
His job with Mobay came through a work-study program between Virginia Tech and the New Martinsville plant. He joined the company in 1976 as its first co-op student, spending half his year as a hands-on engineer and the other half in the classroom. He transferred to West Virginia University in 1978 and completed his mechanical engineering degree in 1980.
He joined Bayer as a full-time engineer in New Martinsville later that year.
Broadening his base
For a new engineer in 1980, New Martinsville was a great place to work, Babe said.
But he also knew that he wanted to advance in his career, so upon his hiring he began to learn the German language, as Bayer is a German-based company.
As anyone who's had a friend or relative working as an engineer in New Martinsville knows, learning German is essentially a requirement for advancement in Bayer's corporate hierarchy. And Babe didn't hesitate.
He spent nine years at New Martinsville in various engineering and production management positions before being promoted to a management post with Bayer at Brunsbuttell, Germany. He said it was there that he learned how to deal with issues and make decisions in a global organization.
But he said his two years in Germany were more important on a personal level as he gained a "high level of independence."
"I was totally immersed (in the German culture) at an outpost at Brunsbuttell," he said. "... Most Americans go to the Leverkusen area (Bayer's headquarters) and I was five hours away and totally immersed in the local (culture) and that was great. It personally was the most fulfilling part of my career. I learned a second language, and I really became competent in managing in a second culture."
He returned to New Martinsville for a year before being named managing director of Bayer subsidiary Hennecke Machinery in 1992. Then, in 1995, he accepted a corporate staff role overseeing ISO certification; in 1997, he oversaw the company's SAP deployments, which is an integrated software package that runs all operations of a business; he served as chief information officer for the North American region for a few years; and in 2003 he became president and CEO of Bayer's service company.
His next promotion came in 2004, when he was named CEO of Bayer MaterialScience.
Babe attributes much of his climb up the corporate ladder to the "broadening opportunities" he has been afforded during his career.
"A career really is like a pyramid and the height of that pyramid - how high you can go - is determined by the breadth of its base," Babe said, noting the different roles he has held for the company and the different projects he has managed have given him a broad base. "That's a critical part of my success. I understand operations very well. I understand how decisions are made ... and operationally how a business works. Many don't have that broad perspective."
Babe also said his success stems from taking on those "big, nasty projects no one else wants."
"There you learn what you're made of," he said. "Yes, there's a risk of failure but with big risk comes high reward. I've done those types of projects in my career and I think in many cases they've determined the opportunities I've had. Those are big, global, complex projects that prepared me and also put me in front of people who do the succession planning to say he's capable of doing that."
Through it all, though, Babe still credits his time in New Martinsville as vital to his career.
"That plant always has had, even in the more difficult times of the last decade or so, a tremendous can-do attitude. ... When asked to deliver on something that other sites may have considered challenging or impossible, that site always found a way to do it," he said.
"I've worked with a lot of great role models throughout the years and not all of those were degreed engineers or scientists - they were planners, maintenance and mechanics who showed me how to work hard, to set your targets high and how to achieve. That leads to a can-do attitude not only on an individual level but from a team perspective and I think that's one reason why New Martinsville has been such a successful pipeline for managers and executives with this company."
A five-year vision and 'megatrends'
At each rung of his executive career ladder, Greg Babe has formulated a five-year vision for where he sees the future of his department. He then spreads the message to his workers to ensure the vision becomes reality.
Now, his five-year vision encompasses the entirety of Bayer Corp.
Babe said once his vision for the company is set, he will "communicate it tirelessly. That's where being in front of the employees is important because no one can deliver my message and my vision with the same kind of passion as I can."
Communicating with employees is one of Babe's strong suits. He holds quarterly town hall meetings with various Bayer sites via videoconference, holds monthly roundtable meetings with 20-25 employees, and says he is open and honest with his workers. He plans to continue that outreach in his new role.
That will be of particular importance as Bayer faces what Babe termed three global "megatrends" - demographic shifts, the energy crisis and climate change - over the next decade.
He described the possible impact of each megatrend as follows:
- Demographic shifts - Bayer has both opportunities and challenges with this trend, Babe said, as there will be an increasing demand for pharmaceuticals and medical products in the U.S. for a population that's living longer. Demand also will be high for new crops from Bayer CropScience to feed a growing world population.
The challenges come from keeping a skilled work force, he noted, as Bayer's U.S. staff is aging.
"We have fewer and fewer technically trained students coming out of our universities to replace an increasingly large part of a very knowledgeable work force. Our scientists and engineers are (heading) into retirement and leaving our workplace and we have to replace them with skilled new graduates," he said.
- Energy - Again, there are opportunities and challenges with energy, Babe said. Bayer produces residential and commercial insulating materials and currently is pushing to have the R-value, or the amount of insulating material needed in a home or business, increased. Bayer also is developing light-weight materials that will improve fuel-efficiency in all forms of transportation.
The cost of electricity also is a factor that will impact local Bayer plants in the coming years.
"Our (three) sites in West Virginia (New Martinsville, South Charleston and Institute) are specialty sites that depend on very low electricity costs. With the price of coal skyrocketing, it puts more pressure on energy costs. The one significant advantage West Virginia has had over other states is a low, stable energy price. This begins to present a challenge for us in our operations."
- Climate change - "We need to have crops that are stress tolerant, because as climate changes we are going to see higher temperatures and changing weather patterns that could mean more drought in areas that are not used to it. We're probably going to see ... advances in biofuels. We have ideas on how to take (certain) crops and generate high quality bio-diesel off those plants. Those are opportunities but also challenges we face."
The New Martinsville site
The New Martinsville site and others in Bayer's MaterialScience family face possibly the toughest challenge over the next several years, as high energy and raw materials costs currently are impacting the bottom line.
Bayer New Martinsville is not what it was 20 years ago, as the company has transitioned it from a full commodity chemical plant to a specialty site that focuses primarily on polyol, or plastics. As it stands now, roughly 450 full-time workers occupy the plant along the Ohio River.
Babe said he sees a solid future for the local plant as a specialty site.
Bayer currently is spending $30 million at New Martinsville to tear down the old MDI and TDI facilities and prepare that land for a new business park. Babe believes the company is close to locating the right tenant to locate next to Bayer.
"We're confident we're going to get those tenants, it's just a matter of time until we identify the right ones with the right needs," he said.
"There are many advantages for (New Martinsville) ... and that's why we have invested $30 million over the last few years to make it a very sound site for us and others."
The short-term future for the New Martinsville site and others in the Bayer MaterialScience division will be rocky, however, as the slowing global economy and high energy and raw material costs will impact this division of Bayer most severely, Babe said.
"Our (MaterialScience) products flow 19 percent into automotive, and we know what that automotive industry is doing here," he said. "They also flow into building and construction, and we know what has happened with residential real estate. We are very big in commercial construction, that has been ... a very bright spot in the U.S. but it is showing signs of cracking. If that drops out, which we think it will in the second half and into next year, that will begin to have an impact on us."
Striking a Balance on the Priority Clock
During a recent trip to Europe for an executive conference, Babe was asked to describe himself in three words. While he could have used something such as "Captain of Industry," he instead chose the following:
"Dad, husband, leader."
Babe has learned the art of mastering all three. He said it's just a matter of setting priorities.
"Balance of life is very critical for me," he said. "I have four kids (Bill, Brandon, Jacklyn and Jessica), and they've been blessed with good athletic genes. ... I don't miss many games."
So how does one balance running a major corporation with family life and the demands of youth sports? For Babe, it means getting into the office early, working hard, communicating with his employees and then working again most evenings and weekends at home.
"I've had times when I've had my son playing in one game and my daughter playing in another, and this year I'll be faced with the new responsibility of having one daughter playing at the university level and one at the high school level and I still won't miss a lot of games. It drives a very crazy schedule but I commit to that."
As much as his wife Carla and four children keep him balanced, there's still a need for some personal time to unwind. This is achieved through walking five miles a day, five to six days per week, he said.
Work also provides a balance for this CEO.
"What turns me on at work is seeing progress, seeing the execution of a well thought-out plan that is going to make us better," he said. "... When we execute that plan ... I can see it not only in the bottom line but also in the satisfaction in the faces of the employees.
"The balance is important. ... That's what keeps the clock running."
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concernedWVian
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09-28-08 12:16 PM
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Greg, I hope you haven't changed from what you were like back in the 70's. Back then you cared about the people that worked in the processes. Congratulations.
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UNCOMMONSENSE
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09-28-08 10:21 AM
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Not only did you have to SPEAK German to hope to advance, ONLY Germans were appointed to high positions in the company. It was also understood that buying AMERICAN was discouraged in favor of buying GERMAN made materials and supplies. One classic example of this was the company's purchase of an INFERIOR telephone system made by a GERMAN company instead of a HIGHLY recommended and more advanced American made PBX. A clearly anti-American purchasing policy that prevailed throughout the company. So to see Greg FINALLY promoted to a position of such power is at least a START. Bayer like many other FORMER large employers of US workers has moved much of their US operations to Communist China. I think if it were not for Greg, the New Martinsville plant would have been closed LONG ago. Thank you Greg, and congratulations. You CERTAINLY have worked deserve it.
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