There’s a difference between being a business owner, and being a true entrepreneur; the latter has a passion, a spark, a hunger to drive their legacy forward and make a lasting difference in their industry. Mark Whitten is one such individual. His commitment to not just his company – but the people and culture behind it – is truly inspirational.

I was lucky enough to get the chance to chat with Mark, President & CEO of Spartanburg Steel. Mark took over this 40-year-old ship two years ago, and it was clear that change was urgent. After ending up in manufacturing by accident, Mark found it his responsibility to conquer SSP’s recent hardships and transform it into the 2.0 powerhouse it is today.

In this exclusive interview, Mark reveals his best-kept secrets behind what goes into building a successful team – which is his number one priority and the driving force behind his business’s success. He also exposes his thought processes behind true performance, along with the value of hard work and determination, explaining how he grew from an hourly employee in a manufacturing facility to the industry authority he is today.

Mark truly has some invaluable insights to share, including the monthly habits he and his team implement to sustain the success they’ve worked so hard to build. This is not an interview you’ll want to miss out on. Hit the button below to check it out right now!

It seems building an engaged team is your number one priority in terms of building a successful business, would you agree?

I started my career as an hourly employee in a manufacturing facility. So, the way I look at leadership is different. I’ve seen good leaders and I’ve seen some not so good leaders in my day. And that formed my thought process that having an engaged workforce that understands the goals of the organisation and is pushing along with leadership in order to achieve those. We do coffee chats with employees, we do surveys, we do Ask the President box. We have one on one meetings. So, yeah, I do believe engagement is a critical part of business.

What kind of challenges have you found with team culture & how did you overcome them?

Two years ago, I came to Spartanburg, and it’s a 40-year-old company, so there’s a lot of history, there’s a lot of “we’ve always done things this way. Why do we need to change?” So a lot of resistance around the need to change.

Obviously, I saw the need to change as I came into the organisation, and I saw that we weren’t performing well to our customers, to our employees, and also financially. I had all the reason in the world why we needed to change. But if you’ve been here 25 years or 30 years, in some cases with some of our employees, they really didn’t understand the reason, so that resistance means continuous educating, discussing, sharing, getting the people to understand their reasons.

There’s a lot of selling to the operation, of why we need to do this and how and what’s the benefit to them. And to me, it’s always job security. I mean, you have to be competitive. You have to be financially performing in order to be sustainable long term, and that’s really what the message is to the workforce here.

You mentioned that you started as an hourly employee in a manufacturing plant. Tell us a little bit about how you got your start in manufacturing?

I went to college and I took Business Administration, and I realised that I couldn’t really understand what that was going to lead to. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life at that time. Then my mother found an advertisement for a new company that was opening up in the city, that was close by to where I was living, and they were advertising new company freight liner, trucks it was. They were building a new facility, hiring from the ground up. My mother shared that with me and said, you should apply there. I said, I don’t know anything about it, but sure. And that’s how I started.

I got hired and I started on the floor as an employee, loading steering gears and frame rails and different things like that for these heavy, classic trucks. And I fell in love with manufacturing from that point forward and just continued my career. I ended up working for General Motors for a period of time, then with most of my career spent with Magna International, a tier one automotive supplier to the automotive industry.

What is it that you love about manufacturing?

Every day is a new challenge, as I’m sure you can appreciate. It’s fast moving. It’s a lot of high energy, a lot of changing continuously. I think it’s fun, but it burns a lot of people out, especially in the automotive space. It’s a highly competitive space to be in. I love running around with my hair on fire most of the time. And if you don’t like to work that way, it’s probably not great for you to be in that space. But I do. It’s not boring, it’s not like coming to work and having a monotonous or routine role.

You really got to be a chameleon. You got to be able to move between, the tactical day to day stuff where you’ve got the whirlwind, it’s constantly happening and then you have to be strategic and have vision and plans to achieve the greater good.

You mentioned that you started as an hourly employee in a manufacturing plant. Tell us a little bit about how you got your start in manufacturing?

I went to college and I took Business Administration, and I realised that I couldn’t really understand what that was going to lead to. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life at that time. Then my mother found an advertisement for a new company that was opening up in the city, that was close by to where I was living, and they were advertising new company freight liner, trucks it was. They were building a new facility, hiring from the ground up. My mother shared that with me and said, you should apply there. I said, I don’t know anything about it, but sure. And that’s how I started.

I got hired and I started on the floor as an employee, loading steering gears and frame rails and different things like that for these heavy, classic trucks. And I fell in love with manufacturing from that point forward and just continued my career. I ended up working for General Motors for a period of time, then with most of my career spent with Magna International, a tier one automotive supplier to the automotive industry.

One of your values is that ‘Structure drives behaviour’. Tell us what that means and what you feel that does?

Well, just to give a little bit of colour around my vision, SSP 2.0. 2 years ago, when I joined the organisation, and again, it’s a family run business, 40 years plus. This has been a very successful company for many years. They went through some hardships in the last few years. It’s one of the reasons I came. But I wanted to honour the past.

I didn’t want in any way for the team here, the employees here, nor ownership to feel like I came in and we’re going to change everything and we’re going to do everything different. I wanted to honour 1.0, I call it. So SSP 1.0 is the past and SSP 2.0 is the future. It doesn’t mean 1.0 is bad, it just means that we have to change. The world is changing and we have to change along with that. So that’s 2.0 and there’s a lot of components to 2.0.

One of the pieces of that is accountability and structure. And as I came into the organisation, I didn’t really follow who reports to who or what the structure was. And I knew if that was the case, that our employees didn’t understand what the goals of the organisation or who to report to etc. So that whole structure piece, getting structure, creating the structure, creating accountability and creating cadence. That’s how we run our operation, minute by minute. It’s really the three components.

And so my belief is, exactly as you say, is structure drives behaviour and ultimately it drives the results.

How does that vision trickle down throughout the business and help you achieve those monthly, quarterly, annual goals?

The 2.0 gave us a clear line in the sand where we could kind of separate ourselves from the past and we could then start to move towards a future state. When you talk to the team here, any level of individual in this business, they will reference 2.0 all the time. Even things like, “well, that’s not 2.0, that’s 1.0”. So they’ll recognise that was the past, and this is the future.

It has made it fun, it gives us all a ‘what’. I have visual tools and we’ve got a roadmap of 2.0, what it looks like and the components of that. We talk a lot about the goals of the organisation with the employees and making sure that everybody understands that. But really, that 2.0 is the vehicle of how we will achieve world class results.

We know we’re not world class yet, we don’t claim to be. But we have a desire to be. And that’s really what that vision statement was about. We want to be a world class company, we want to do things in a world class way.

So it’s really creating that vision. And I can tell you it’s working because in 2021 we had our best year in the last, say, four years, customer issues went down by 80%. We were profitable for the first time in four years. I really give the credit to the team here.

Have mentors played a role in helping you to get where you are today?

Yeah, absolutely. Interestingly enough, and I go back to referencing my start in my career was as an hourly shop floor employee, having those glasses and looking through those glasses, looking at management’s behaviour, I saw some great leaders, but I witnessed some awful leaders as well. And I will tell you, that both were equally important in my development because I got to see first hand what doesn’t work, what I shouldn’t do if I’m ever to be a leader.

I never planned to be a president or CEO, but I certainly witnessed some really poor behaviour from leaders and I saw some great mentors that I learned a tremendous amount. I didn’t come out of University and go directly into a management role, I went the other way and learned through the harder way of being a shop floor hourly employee and earning my time on the floor. Honestly, I think that that’s one of the reasons I consider myself to be a different type of leader.

How would you say you’ve had to change personally to get from employee to CEO?

I think having the opportunity to work in three countries, different companies, and learning from what I would refer to as a humble start, as a shop floor employee, and over time, having the opportunity to be in many different roles, in quality, in continuous improvement, as an assistant plant manager, plant manager.

The combination of that has certainly moulded who I am today and how my belief windows and how I treat others. I certainly couldn’t have predicted back when I was a young person just starting that I ever had aspirations to be in the role I’m in today. It just worked out that way. I worked hard and made a LOT of mistakes and learned from those mistakes.

What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and get in touch?

LinkedIn is the best way.

I’m happy to share information. I reply on a regular basis to most people that send me notes and messages.