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CEOs wear camouflage suits

By Fara Warner
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Sunday, Apr 13, 2003, Page 12

Major Ronald W. Burkett, right, a reservist and an executive at Ask Jeeves, works on a battle simulator with Captain Jason Beam in Houston last Wednesday. As the armed forces rely heavily on reservists to fill important roles during times of conflict, companies are quickly learning that dealing with the absence of important executives goes far beyond completing day-to-day tasks. PHOTO: NY TIMES

Daniel Travers considers himself lucky. Before he was called to active duty in Iraq, Travers, a colonel in the Marine Reserve, was able to train a "second in command" to take over his civilian job as a logistics manager at Siemens Westinghouse Power in Orlando, Florida.

But his co-workers are still coping with his absence. "People have come to depend on his strong personality and his leadership abilities," said his boss, Rick A. Merker. "His absence has left a vacuum."

As the armed forces rely heavily on reservists like Travers, 47, to fill important roles in the Middle East and at home, companies are quickly learning that dealing with the absence of important executives goes far beyond completing day-to-day tasks.

Much harder is filling in the gaps in creative, managerial and other skills that make many reservists so valuable in their civilian jobs.

At Ask Jeeves, an Internet search company in Emeryville, California, colleagues of Ronald W. Burkett, an account manager who is also a major in the Army Reserve, are keeping in touch with his main clients, including Hewlett-Packard and the Navy. Burkett, a former Apache helicopter pilot, is on active duty in Houston, training soldiers on computer programs that help them simulate air and ground missions.

But his colleagues at Ask Jeeves said they couldn't replace the skills that help Burkett, who is known as Win, bring in sales.

"Revenue is really important during these economic times," said A. George Battle, chief executive of Ask Jeeves. "Win is one of our best producers, and we're a small company. We have people who can fill in, but that's like saying the Chicago Bulls know everything that Michael Jordan can do."

Reservists are also vital to the military.

More than 218,000 reservists and members of the National Guard have been put on active duty because of the action in Iraq. That is the largest call-up since the Persian Gulf War, when about 265,000 reservists were called to active duty, according to the Defense Department.

Reservists and members of the National Guard -- all 1.22 million of them -- now make up 48 percent of all the armed forces, according Lieutentant Colonel Stephen G. Brozak, a Marine reservist who is the spokesman for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. The support agency operates a Web site, www.esgr.org, that provides information about the Reserves and the National Guard and civilian employment requirements.

"Reservists have become indispensable to the military as it has downsized -- there's been a 40 percent reduction in military personnel in the past decade," Brozak said. "Some military positions now are filled solely by reservists."

Reservists are even filling senior-level military positions. Last August, for example, James M. Collins Jr., a major general in the Army Reserve, took a three-year leave from his job at Weyerhaeuser to become the deputy commanding general and chief of staff of 1st Corps, stationed at Fort Lewis in the state of Washington.

Collins says the Army has increasingly turned to the Reserve and National Guard to find people with specific skills. Sometimes, as in his case, skills are found in those who have worked both inside and outside the military.

Weyerhaeuser, he said, decided not to replace him as manager of information technology while he was on active duty, instead assigning his duties among other employees.

Though reservists often fill jobs in the US, many are serving in combat zones. Travers was in Iraq in early April as deputy commander of the Marine Rear Area Operations Group. His job in the military mirrors his civilian job managing inventory and distribution.

Dr. Michael J. Paletta, the corporate medical officer for the Hospice of Michigan, in Detroit, also has skills that make him crucial to both his military and his civilian bosses. But he has gone even further than Travers in planning for active duty.

Paletta, 45, who is a colonel in the Air National Guard and the surgeon general of Michigan, has already written a specific plan so that his staff is ready to take over his patients. But even with such planning, he expects that the staff will face a challenge in caring for the more than 900 terminally ill patients at the hospice -- 170 of whom are under his direct care every day.

"Health care companies are much leaner than they used to be," he said. "There are no surplus executives here."

Paletta, 45, has not yet been called to active duty, but he is still balancing his civilian and military roles. He has orders with the Air Force that require him to be on call to train medics in combat medicine and in biological and chemical decontamination.

Technology and planning are making it somewhat easier for reservists to keep track of their civilian jobs even when they are on active duty.

Burkett, 38, has kept in touch with his colleagues through phone calls and e-mail messages. The colleagues are accustomed to such virtual contact. Burkett, who is based in Houston for Ask Jeeves, works with four other sales representatives who work from offices in Massachusetts and California.

Before he left for active duty, Burkett was able to send e-mail messages to all his clients to explain his absence. Then he got on his cellphone to his colleagues. "I said: 'Have you got an hour? Because I'm going to do a brain dump on everything I know,"' he said.

Despite the planning, Burkett's boss, Robyn N. Baer, vice president for account management, said it had been difficult without him.

"Clients fall into two camps," she said. "Some accept people filling in for Win; others say they'll wait for him to come back."

Some companies hire replacements for active-duty reservists, though federal law requires them to hold reservists' jobs open. Many companies voluntarily continue to pay salaries and health care benefits for reservists and their families.

But the use of executive replacements often means reconsidering how teams work together -- and what they work on.

When Colonel James E. Couch, 50, a first vice president and counsel at Bank One in Columbus, Ohio, went on active duty in December, the two other real estate lawyers in his team felt his absence immediately.

After talking with Couch, the bank's general counsel, Molly Carpenter, decided to hire another lawyer. "But she's not just doing Jim's job," Carpenter said. "The whole team's work has been shifted because each lawyer has subspecialties. It's hard to find the same mix as it was when Jim was here."

Unlike some other reservists still in the US, Couch has little time to think of anything but his military job. He is the deputy division chief for the Iraq task force at the Army National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville, Virginai.

"My team keeps in touch," he said. "But they are very gracious about not burdening me with questions about work."
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