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Moving Mountains
What's it like to be a woman in the "old-boy" construction business of the South? "It's a lot of fun," says Kathy L. Barco (23rd OPM), president of Barco-Duval Engineering, Inc., the Jacksonville, Florida, earth-moving company founded in 1959 by her parents, Charlie (6th OPM) and Lynda (15th OPM) Barco. The elder Barcos-he at the helm and she in control of finances-grew their business from a single tractor operation with a few landscaping jobs into one of the largest contractors in northeast Florida. Currently the company employs 95 workers and boasts more than $15 million in business. When Charlie Barco passed away unexpectedly in 1994, he left a strong operation in the capable hands of his wife and daughter.
"My parents understood the importance of long-range planning in a family business," says Kathy Barco, who had completed the first of three OPM units at the time of her father's death. Following the second OPM round one month later, Barco was named president by her mother. "I don't manage our employees in the autocratic way that my father did," she notes, "and yet my style, which is consensual, seems to get the same or better results." Given that she worked for the family business for ten years before taking the reins, Barco hasn't had to spend much time gaining the respect of her employees. "This company is our family," she says. "The guys affectionately call me 'Boss Lady,' and my mom goes by 'Mama Lou.'"
One of her challenges, Barco notes, is working with her younger brother, Barry, who rejoined the business just after their father's death and following a foray into entrepreneurship. "A drawback to family business," Barco observes, "is that the founder is often a dominant personality, like my father was, so the children-you might call them chips off the old block-like to do things their own way." (Barco's elder brother, Keith, similarly branched out, first in construction and now in real estate.)
Sensing in Barry a desire to become a manager, yet aware of his need for more experience, Barco attended the School's Families in Business Executive Education program in November with him. When the time is right, she notes, Barry will also likely follow family tradition by attending the OPM Program. "As brother and sister, we get along great," Barco says with a smile. "Working together? Now that's a new chapter."
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