Irreconcilable Differences

For months, NPCA insiders have sensed that major changes in the association's staff and structure were in the works. But no one expected the departure of the organization's chief operating officer to be among those changes.

Tuesday, June 27. The bulletin that zipped out over the fax wires and into the offices of pest control industry leaders around the country on this summer afternoon could scarcely have been more brief. A scant five lines of type on a sea of white, flanked from above by the familiar National Pest Control Association logo, the message contained almost no information at all but the news it conveyed was enormous.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 27, 1995

(Dunn Loring, VA) The National Pest Control Association announces that Harvey S. Gold, Executive Vice President since 1984, has left the Association, effective June 27, 1995. NPCA regrets Mr. Gold's departure and wishes him success in the future. There will be no interruption in member services while NPCA conducts the search for a new Executive Vice President.

Almost before the fax machine had finished spitting out the message, the phone lines started to buzz. The story began to take shape, sketching its own outlines, filling itself in. Many of the colors weren't very pretty.

What happened, according to NPCA staffers and Harvey Gold himself, was this: Two members of the NPCA Executive Board, association President Larry Treleven (of W.B. Sprague & Co., Tacoma, Wash.) and Membership Vice President Tom Diederich (of Orkin Pest Control, Atlanta, Ga.), arrived together unannounced at the NPCA's headquarters in Dunn Loring, Va., earlier that day. They abruptly informed Harvey Gold that the Executive Board had dismissed him, permanently, effective immediately. They asked him to leave the premises. After some discussion, Gold did so. Not long after, the locks on the building were replaced with new ones. And the NPCA Executive Board turned itself toward the long, arduous, painstaking task of finding a new executive to replace the man who had been the association's leader and chief operating officer for four days short of eleven years.

Paradoxically, while the timing of Gold's dismissal obviously sent shockwaves rumbling through the industry, the news itself didn't seem to surprise that many people at least not among those who have kept an eye on the workings of the National Pest Control Association in recent years. The NPCA's membership numbers, the most objective evidence by which a trade association's health and effectiveness may be gauged, had been declining and/or stagnating for five years running. No one could honestly pronounce themselves happy or satisfied with those numbers not the NPCA Executive Board, not the NPCA Board of Directors, not any of the association's officers or staff or members, not anyone involved in pest control who cares about the future of the industry and their profession. And certainly not Harvey Gold himself.

A BAD OMEN. A measure of the popularity and respect Gold had achieved in his 11-year tenure with the National Pest Control Association was evidenced by the nearly unanimous unwillingness of more than a dozen NPCA insiders who were contacted by PCT to talk on the record about the disagreements that led to Gold's sudden, stormy departure from the association. But another far less appealing reason that some of those insiders declined to comment is the ugly specter of a legal battle that is likely to take place to settle claims for severance pay and other contractual obligations that Gold alleges he is owed by the NPCA.

As PCT went to press, it appeared inevitable that Gold would take legal action against his former employer. The day after his dismissal, Gold told PCT, "When they terminated me yesterday, I had to leave my office like a thief. I'm not going to let this rest. I've been kept out of the loop for a long time."

In a letter he sent to NPCA staffers the week following his dismissal, Gold said he was fired by the Executive Board because he "defended the rights of staff members who are in protected classes of employment. ... I believed that a discriminatory action was taking place and I spoke up. That was my crime. It was not the first time I spoke up on these issues."

In a statement Gold sent via broadcast fax July 6 to members of the association, the former executive vice president said he was "deeply disappointed by the actions of the (NPCA) Executive Board." He reiterated that he was "terminated after defending the rights of staff members in protected classes of employment." He went on to define "protected classes of employment" as "those who are over the age of 40, disabled, female, pregnant, a victim of sexual harassment, non-white, exercising freedom of religion, or a victim of retaliation."

The most ominous sign of the likelihood of an ensuing court battle over the firing was two letters Gold wrote and faxed to NPCA President Larry Treleven on June 21, six days before he was terminated. In the first of those letters, Gold alleged the Executive Board had given him "clear instruction" to "engage in an illegal act, i.e., firing an employee based on age and creating a pretextual reason for the termination." Gold claimed the Board had directed him to fire Joel Paul, the association's communications director, by June 1. (Paul is 49 years of age.) Gold noted there were no "negative performance issues" documented in Paul's personnel file, and thus terminating Paul would contradict NPCA policy.

Gold further wrote that the Executive Board's decision "appeared to be motivated because of Mr. Paul's age," and that the Board "concocted a justification by saying, `What if we said we were eliminating Mr. Paul's department?'"

In the second of the two letters he faxed to NPCA President Larry Treleven on June 21, Gold wrote that "the actions and inactions of the (Executive) Board make my continued employment impossible and conditions intolerable. ... Therefore, I consider that the Board has constructively discharged me without cause. ... It is because of the hostile and intolerable work environment that I consider myself to have been constructively discharged."

Citing the terms of the four-year employment contract that Gold and the Board agreed to last year, Gold requested 22 months' severance, accrued salary and benefits, and a continuation of other benefits set forth in the contract. In addition to what he termed his "contractual entitlement" to severance and benefits, Gold wrote, "I am suffering ... additional injury and loss which are independently compensable under federal and state law. Nothing contained in this letter should be construed by you to be a waiver of any of my rights to pursue remedies available to me in other (forums), under causes of action in addition to my contractual rights." He further wrote that in keeping with the terms of his contract, he would continue to work an additional 90 days, or through Sept. 19, 1995.

On June 27, six days after he faxed these two letters to Treleven, Gold was removed from office.

PCT contacted NPCA President Larry Treleven to ask him about the issues that created the rift between Gold and the Board. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that," he said. "We've been directed by our attorneys not to say anything about it."

THE BIGGER PICTURE. While it appears that the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was the situation revolving around the employment of communications director Joel Paul (and the consequent legal ramifications related to Gold's claims of age discrimination), many association insiders believe there was a larger force at work that actually created the wedge that eventually separated the National Pest Control Association from its most recent executive vice president. That force was the much-talked-about membership survey and marketing plan recently completed for the association by Gateway Management Solutions, a consulting firm based in St. Louis, Mo.

The final report summarizing the membership survey and marketing plan which was seven months in the making and wound up to be 400 pages thick was formally presented by Jim Budzynski of Gateway Management Solutions to the NPCA Executive Board in a marathon 12-hour session July 7. At press time, the Executive Board was in the process of creating a shorter "abstract" version of the report to be distributed to NPCA members. Treleven told PCT that the Gateway Management Solutions report recommends several "major, major" changes in the current configuration of the association.

According to several reliable and well-placed sources interviewed by PCT who requested anonymity, some of the more specific recommendations made in the Gateway Management Solutions report include a significant reduction in the size and structure of the NPCA Board of Directors; a significant restructuring of the association dues process; and a reorganization of the NPCA's staff structure, including elimination of the Communications Department, cessation of publication of Pest Management magazine, and creation of a new Marketing Director staff position.

Some of these recommended measures have already been implemented by the NPCA Executive Board. Among them:

• The Communications Department has been eliminated, and Joel Paul's employment with the NPCA was scheduled to terminate at the end of July. Paul's assistant, Noreen Slavin, was reassigned to work in the association's Research, Education and Technical Resources Department, headed by Dr. Richard Kramer. In the future, the NPCA will retain an outside agency to conduct its public relations and communications activities.

• The Executive Board has informed the NPCA staff that the association will cease publication of Pest Management magazine before the end of 1995. The Board is seeking alternatives, such as developing an NPCA newsletter or entering into a joint venture to publish an association magazine in collaboration with an outside publisher.

• At least temporarily, the remaining four NPCA operating departments have been consolidated into three departments Government Affairs (which will continue to be headed by Bob Rosenberg); Research, Education and Technical Resources (Dr. Richard Kramer will continue at the helm); and Administration (headed by Eileen Carr, who formerly was in charge of the Finance Department). The Finance Department has been "folded into" the Administration Department, according to NPCA staff sources.

Treleven emphasized that this new staff structure may only be temporary. "It may not necessarily stay this way," he said. "We want to leave some latitude in the structure so that the new executive we bring in can have some say on how things will be structured, and (that new executive) will also have some say on who will be serving in various positions within that structure."

More than one NPCA staff member, as well as Gold himself, have said they feel Gold was shut out of the loop in the development of the membership survey and marketing plan. (Gold did, however, tell PCT he was actively involved in the early stages of the study, including the selection of Gateway Management Solutions to perform the survey.)

"This is a major, major reorganization that the association is going through," said former communications director Joel Paul. "There has been a lot of controversy involved, and it became very politicized. With the management study that this reorganization is based on, I think Harvey (Gold) was shut out of being able to give much input into the process, and that was one of the reasons it became so political."

PRAISE FOR THE STUDY. Whether or not it was a contributing factor to the split between the National Pest Control Association and Harvey Gold, the Gateway Management Solutions report has been generally praised by current and past NPCA Executive Board members who have reviewed it.

Richard Sameth of Western Industries, Parsippany, N.J., called the study "an excellent investment in the future."

NPCA President-Elect Bob Kunst said, "I'm very pleased with the final report. Naturally, not everyone is 100 percent behind every recommendation. But I think the vast majority (of the recommendations) will be implemented and will serve the NPCA well."

Former NPCA President Norm Cooper said, "The report is very comprehensive. I believe it was well thought-out and that it will strengthen the association and guide us very effectively through the next several years."

FINDING A SUCCESSOR. How long will it take to name a successor to Harvey Gold? Probably somewhere between three and six months, according to Bob Dold, the former NPCA president who was recently tapped by Treleven to chair the executive search committee that has been created to find that successor.

"I think we need to move ahead as quickly as we can to fill the position," Dold said. "But I also know from firsthand experience that to do it right, the process does take some time. Ideally, we'll have it narrowed down by the convention (in October). But getting the right person, and being certain that we're making the right decisions as we move through the search process, is the most important thing."

(Prospective candidates are asked to contact Dold at Rose Exterminator, 333 Skokie Blvd., Northbrook IL 60062, 708/272-4900 for additional information.)

FALLING BEHIND. In the long run, when one steps back to look at the broad picture, the parting of ways between Harvey Gold and the National Pest Control Association was inevitable. The times and the business environment that the NPCA exists within are changing rapidly, and for at least the last four or five years, the association has not kept pace with those changes.

"The NPCA is not at a critical mass in terms of lobbying," said Gateway Management Solutions' Jim Budzynski at a recent NPCA Leadership Development Group meeting. "They need to reach that level. And they need to develop a strong product and improve the services offered to members."

Said Terminix's Norm Goldenberg: "We hired (Harvey Gold) at a time when the primary need for the association was to achieve some credibility. And he certainly helped the association get to that point. But we're beyond that now, and we've got to move on to the next step."

NPCA President-Elect Bob Kunst said Gold "has led the association through very difficult times and very good times. He has done an admirable job for the association in many areas. But you reach a point sometimes, even with a good man, when the direction the governing body wants to take and the direction he wants to take become very divergent. And the association, without question, was stagnating."

AN UNINTENTIONAL EPITAPH. Although he didn't intend it as such when he wrote it, Gold's editorial column that appeared in the June 1995 of Pest Management (the next-to-last column he would write as NPCA executive vice president) could be read as a telling and ironic parable of the last few years of his tenure at the NPCA. Titled "A Visit To The Gurus," Gold wrote a whimsical tale about an imaginary pilgrimage he made to visit four sages to solicit their advice about a problem that has continually frustrated him NPCA members' apathetic voting record in the association's annual officer elections.

The last of the four gurus Gold visited was "Dave in the Cave." "It was a long trek up the mountain," he wrote, "and as I entered the darkness of his home, I said, `Dave, I need your help,' and poured out my problem.

"He laughed. `The problem is you.'

"`Me? What have I done?'

"`You haven't gotten angry enough. They have to know you're angry. You can't be a nice guy about it. You have to make the problem sound as bad as it really is. You must yell and shout and pound the table. You have to get red in the face and tell it like it is.'

"`But that's just not me. I try to tell them logically about how important it is to vote. I don't get angry. I try to solve problems with reason.'

"He laughed. `That's a waste of time. You can see it doesn't work. Get mad. Get them mad.'"

Here's hoping the National Pest Control Association is able to find a successor who can combine Gold's superb consensus-building skills his flair for reason, logic and compromise with several other important skills. Among those skills: the ability to read situations and, when when the situation calls for it, to get red in the face, pound the table, and yell. PCT

Pete Fehrenbach is Editor of Pest Control Technology magazine. Additional reporting and research for this article were provided by PCT Publisher Dan Moreland and Senior Editor Jeff Fenner.

A PRESIDENTIAL TALE Longevity is a hallmark of those individuals who have occupied the Executive Vice President's position of the National Pest Control Association. In the association's 62-year history only six individuals have held the top spot. In the wake of Harvey Gold's recent departure, that list will expand to seven come this fall. The following is a complete list of all of NPCA's executive vice presidents, including the years they served the association: EXECUTIVE VP YEARS IN OFFICE William O. Buettner 1933 1953 Dr. Ralph E. Heal 1953 1972 Richard Eldridge 1972 1977 Dr. Philip J. Spear 1977 1978 Jefferson D. Keith 1978 1984 Harvey S. Gold 1984 1995