[PCT Leadership Winner] Debbie Byrne

With a background ranging from “hippie wild child” to accountant, Alaskan fishing-boat worker to crises-line minister, and governor’s page to pest control executive, Debbie Byrne’s life has often taken her where few women have gone before. And she does it all with a calmness and professionalism that has earned her the admiration of her peers.
Byrne, vice president and general manager for Western Exterminator Company in Anaheim, Calif., doesn’t see any advantage or disadvantage to being a woman in a male-dominated industry. “I don’t worry about it,” she said. “If you deal with people face to face and you’re fair, people will respect you, it doesn’t matter.”
Western’s staff – among the finest in the industry – seems to agree. “She’s very fair minded. … She’s calm under fire. … She’s just generally a good person to be around,” says Larry Musgrove, Western’s manager of regulatory affairs. “In a world that hasn’t had a lot of leadership represented by a female, it’s extraordinary that we have a person of Debbie’s caliber.”
President Michael Katz says that people are placed in positions at Western because of quality not gender. The jobs in this industry are not gender-specific, he says, and the company works very hard to bring more women into the technical side of the business. As related specifically to Byrne, who held managerial positions with Western well before most companies began to recruit women, Katz says, “I credit people in the organization in being very open-minded for the long term. She is a very good leader.” 
While Byrne does not believe one’s gender will determine one’s success in the industry, she does see differences in management styles. “I’m more of a collaborative leader,” Byrne says. “I primarily work with all men. They tend to be ‘This is the way it is.’ I tend to ask more questions, assess various points of view, and then I’ll make a decision. I don’t have trouble making the decision, but I try to listen.”

PERSONAL HISTORY
Born and raised in a blue-collar family in Southern California with two younger siblings — a brother and a sister, Byrne was the first in her family to attend college. She started out at Rio Hondo Community College then transferred to California State University, Long Beach, where she studied psychology. During her senior year, Byrne “lost focus” and decided to take some time off from school, during which she traveled to Alaska and lived there for a year working on a fishing boat, then as a governor’s page in Juneau. She was ready to return to college to finish her degree, but the city, at that time, “was all bars and tourist shops,” Byrne says. It had no four-year colleges.
So she returned to California, where she got heavily involved with church life and decided to finish out her degree at Anaheim Theological Seminary, earning a bachelor’s degree in ministry in 1976.
Unfortunately, as Byrne soon discovered, though the seminary was willing to grant degrees to females, “no one wanted to pay you,” she said. For a while, Byrne did volunteer work — counseling, ministering on crises hotlines, staying involved with churches. “I enjoyed that,” she says. “I wanted to be in the helping profession. I enjoyed working with people.” Eventually, though, Byrne needed an income. “I went into accounting because I needed to make money. I was always good at math even though I didn’t like it,” she says. Thus, as is the case with many in the industry, Byrne came into pest management by a round-about path.
“My first introduction to the pest control industry was in 1980 when I took a job at a Western division in their accounting department,” she says. “I thought it was going to be a short-term job until I identified what I wanted to do.” Byrne ended up working there for 15 years, during which time she returned, once again, to college, attaining her bachelor of business administration in financial accounting from National University. To further expand her options, Byrne then began night school and obtained her masters of business administration from the University of LaVerne.
And it was with her MBA that she moved to the corporate office, becoming Western’s controller, then vice president of finance. “In my finance and accounting positions, I always believed that it was important to understand the business you were in, so I learned as much as I could about the operations of the company.” It was an attitude that was to take her to her leadership success of today.

TRANSITION TO OPERATIONS
Although Byrne historically had served in financial positions at the company, Western President Michael Katz says it was her knack of working and dealing with people that caused him to ask her to transition to operations and become the company’s general manager. “She just had the potential to do the job,” Katz says, explaining that the company has plenty of people who are experts in pest control, but the position of general manager requires a more diverse range of skills. “You need to be a person firmly planted on the ground and down to earth…a good leader…excellent in dealing with people. She possesses all of those talents.”
In addition, Katz says, Byrne understands the culture of the organization and is able to manage within the framework of the company. “We’re an old, very traditional company,” he says. “Maintaining and enhancing our existing culture is very important.”
“When they first asked me to go into operations, I thought they were off their rockers,” Byrne says. “I really hadn’t been in the field; I had not done pest control.” In fact, the first time she was offered the general manager position, Byrne turned it down, believing her strengths were in finance, not operations. Katz remembers this first conversation very well, himself. “She looked at me and said, ‘I don’t think so,’” he says. To which he simply replied that they could revisit the idea later. “I had planted the seed.”
A year later, when Katz again proposed the transition, Byrne replied in the affirmative. “The more I thought about it, it made sense,” she says. She realized that it was not necessary that she know all the technical aspects of pest control. “You have 800 people to send out in the field who know what to do, so it made sense to have a business person.”
It is Byrne’s people skills, calm demeanor under pressure, general likability and ability to garner the respect of her peers that have ensured her continued success since becoming general manager in 2001, says Katz. Musgrove said he was initially surprised when Byrne was made general manager, but has since realized that she was a good choice. “She’s bright, she’s articulate, she has a lot of knowledge,” he says, and she has excellent people skills, which Musgrove feels is one of the most important characteristics of an effective manager.
Katz confirms this with his assessment of those whom Byrne manages. “They respect her very much. They like her too; that makes it work well,” he says.
In addition, though, Byrne is a great fit with both the company and its management team. When speaking with Western managers, the overwhelming take on Byrne is that she is not only a “good friend” but an extremely effective leader. As Musgrove explains, “As a leader, she brings a high degree of calmness. She’s a good balance for the team.”

JACK OF ALL TRADES
As general manager, Byrne says, “sometimes I feel like I do a little of everything and a lot of nothing.” Because of the size of the company, she explains, she oversees operations and the district managers, as well as home office sales, human resources, marketing and technical training, but she can’t be intimately involved with all areas of the business. “We don’t have strict lines,” she explains. “We all interact on a daily basis.”
Byrne would be the first to admit that she is not an expert technician, but she does hold a Branch 2/General Pest license, goes out in the field to work with technicians, tries to visit all 30 offices each year, and studies all of the industry’s technical books so “I have some basic knowledge.” This is particularly important, she says, because of Western’s policy that a customer who wants to talk to a manager is connected directly to the manager without any screening. “I want to understand when I take customer calls what (technicians) do when they go out in the field,” Byrne says.
Byrne admits that although they “come with the territory” of being a manager, the phone calls are her least favorite part of the job. “I can’t say I like it, because they’re usually angry,” she says, adding, “I view it as an opportunity to get a feel for what’s going on; it’s an opportunity to solve a problem.” The calls also are important, she says, because they usually reflect a communication issue. “Customers just want to be heard,” she said. While there’s always the question of whether the customer’s pest problem was solved, more often it’s a communication problem rather than a technical issue, she says.
Ultimately, Byrne says, the goal is to provide the best possible customer service and solve the problem. “You don’t worry about it if it costs you extra money. If the customer has a problem, you go solve the problem. The most important thing is the customer — no matter what.”
By all accounts, Byrne’s varied background has proven to be a key factor in her success as a manager: Her counseling and ministerial history, her blue-collar childhood and her extensive, if “wild,” travels have all provided her with a keen understanding of people and the ability to see — and appreciate — their individual strengths and weaknesses. It’s an essential component of Byrne’s compassionate approach to leadership, a personal style that fits well with Western’s corporate culture, which is respected throughout the pest management industry.
Her training in finance and accounting add a detail-oriented focus to the people-oriented tasks of management: “Financial decisions can’t be made without understanding the impact on the business and the people,” she says, “and business decisions shouldn’t be made without understanding their impact on finances.” In addition, her gender brings a balance to the management team, providing a sometimes unique perspective. And her personality just seems to fit.
“I just think she’s a good person,” Musgrove says. And you can’t get a better endorsement than that, particularly from a fellow Leadership Award winner.