Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, please join us.
Leadership Levers
It’s Not the How, It’s the Who - Performance Growth Lessons with Adam Povlitz
Is your next level of growth a process problem or a people problem?
Highlights Covered
- How a three-tier, national franchise model adds complexity to culture alignment
- The difference between handing out handbooks and living your mission
- Why the right senior hire is often the real unlock for growth
- How Covid forced consistent, system-wide communication and culture buy-in
- Leadership takeaway - most plateaus aren’t solved with how - they’re solved with who!
Summary
This episode offers practical insights on scaling culture, leading remotely, and making the people investments that matter most.
Will Gladhart is joined by Adam Povlitz, CEO and President of Anago Cleaning Systems, a national commercial cleaning franchise with a unique three-tier model.
With experience in both corporate finance and entrepreneurship, Adam shares how a shift from IBM analyst to franchise owner gave him the grounded leadership perspective he brings to the business today.
Adam reflects on the challenges of leading culture across a multi-layered franchise system - corporate team, master franchisees, and unit-level operators - many of whom he rarely sees in person.
Especially during Covid, Adam and his team built a cadence of twice-weekly, system-wide communication to create clarity, encourage feedback, and drive alignment in real time - not just once a year at an annual meeting.
He also shares one of the most important lessons of his leadership journey - growth isn’t always about refining the process.
Often, it’s about finding the right person to get the organization to the next level. For Adam, progress has almost always come down to a “who,” not a “how.”
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladheart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Today, our guest is Adam Povlitz, CEO and President of Cleaning Systems. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here, great. Well, let's begin by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and your organization.
Adam Povlitz:Sure, I am, as you said, the CEO and President of Anago Cleaning Systems. We are a commercial cleaning franchise brand, but we are a little bit different from franchise brands that most people are familiar with, because while most brands are a two-tier system right, so McDonald's, and then the people that own the restaurants right, we are a three-tier system. So it's a bit unique in that we have our corporate office and then what we have is what's called a master franchise and then, underneath the master franchise, we have what's called a unit franchise, and so, if you just think of it more like most commercial cleaning is done at night, it's probably easier mentally to say like the day job versus the night job. The master franchise handles the day job, so it's the sales, marketing and accounting, and then the unit franchisee owns the janitorial business and they'd learn the chemicals, the equipment, hire the crews and keep the buildings clean.
Adam Povlitz:And we've found that the model works really well because it allows for people who maybe are looking to get into business but aren't quite sure how and maybe don't have the business background, they can start a business inexpensively at the unit franchise level. Or if someone has a corporate background and knows how to manage a sales team or a customer service team. They can come in at the master franchise level. So it creates a cool synergy where the master franchise does absolutely zero cleaning but they're in the cleaning business and the unit franchise gets all the clients that they need to grow their business but doesn't have any sales reps or sales staff that they have. So everyone, everyone kind of, works together and saves money on overhead.
William Gladhart:Yeah, that's really interesting, especially giving the opportunity of someone who wants to get in business, because, you know, a lot of the time I hear from business owners they're like, oh, I didn't realize I had to be the salesperson and the accountant and the and the biz lead, the biz dev guy and all this stuff. I just I got into this because I love doing something. So thank you for sharing that. I think when we talked briefly, you kind of have an interesting story about how you got into this business.
Adam Povlitz:Yeah, I mean so. My father founded the business in 1989. I never wanted to get into the quote unquote, you know, family business or anything like that. My background is actually corporate finance. I was with IBM for a little while in New York and then, during the 2008, 2009 recession that we all lived through, ibm did this huge mass round of layoffs. I wasn't laid off. I was actually one of the analysts reviewing. I didn't have names, I had employee numbers and I was reviewing who of the analysts reviewing? I didn't have names, I had employee numbers and I was reviewing who got the, basically without having a name. Who got the golden parachute, whose parachute was not so golden and it leaves quite a sour taste in your mouth for corporate America.
Adam Povlitz:I happened to be down for the holidays visiting my dad and he said you got to check this whole thing out. I think I might have the tiger by the tail and it was about six months later that I joined and he literally goes. I don't even know anybody who says this, but he said congratulations on leaving your highfalutin finance job. High-falutin, that was the word. I remember that for some reason, you left your highfalutin finance job and your first job at Antigo. You're going to be a telemarketer by day and a franchisee's assistant at night cleaning a daycare. So I went from the old white shirt, blue suit of IBM to jeans and a T-shirt, scrubbing toilets and 55-gallon out drums full of diapers.
William Gladhart:Well, that's, that's definitely a different mindset shift, especially for a leader as well. Adam, we're going to be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to start our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Adam Povlitz:Sure, I think the old cliche about culture eating strategy for breakfast it always comes true no amount of strategy or planning can make up for a disconnected culture. I think when people feel like they're part of something that matters, they're going to work harder, they're going to push further, and it creates a creative environment where people can thrive, rather than an oppressive place where people are avoiding being punished.
William Gladhart:Right. I think that's really great insight for others to hear and we specifically can prove numerically that and I'm sure you've seen it in your bottom line that when people are engaged, when they're incentivized, when they're connected to the organization, they understand their role, there's an increase in performance across the board and everyone understands what they're supposed to be doing and moving in the same direction. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process or profits or a combination of those. In your role as CEO, could you identify which one of these areas represented a cultural challenge within your organization?
Adam Povlitz:Ours would probably be really focused on people, for two reasons. Number one, we are a franchise organization, so the culture within our organization obviously we can have a direct impact on, but then the culture in our franchisees organizations and then the unit franchisees organizations as well. It's multiple layers down and trying to impart that culture, the Antigo culture across multiple layers, is definitely not for the weak-willed. And then, secondarily, I think it's all about bringing in the right hires. I would say I was probably for lack of a better word. I would say I was maybe afraid to make some big splash, senior level hires, early on in my career. And if I was going to tell my younger self, right, it would be like no, no, no, do it, do it now, do it right away, because it's all about the right people in the right seats.
William Gladhart:I think that's a really interesting perspective, to be able to put those people in the right seats. But also there is a tipping point where it could be too late versus where it might not quite be right. But if it's the right person, it'll make all the difference in the organization.
Adam Povlitz:Can you identify a challenge that negatively impacted your organization, kind of around those same tenants? I think the most key way to express it is, particularly with our franchisees, when you're not in the office quote unquote, like the classic in the office, together building that culture it's very easy for them to feel disconnected. They have things they need to continue growing their business and you know they don't feel like they're being heard. It's how do you, how do you get people who you don't see every day, you might only be in front of in person once or twice a year, to buy into a larger vision and mission and the direction that you want to take the organization and ultimately take it to the next level. It's and it turns into something where it's like this it's not your mission statement, it's not the employee handbook, right, it's. It has to be lived, it has to be reinforced through real interactions with real people.
William Gladhart:Yeah, and I think you expressed you have a particular challenge and not only are there franchisees that are part of the one division, the organization and there's franchisees that have are part of another part of the organization, to that third tier, and creating that balance but also the outreach as a leader to those different groups of people and you know how do you bring them all together as one. I think is a challenge that most of us would be thinking, that that would be kind of something big to overhaul no-transcript.
Adam Povlitz:So I think that tipping point for us was actually all happened kind of during Covid. During Covid, everyone's going what you know, kind of what do we do next? What's going on. And we had to make it a point to regularly communicate with the entire system. Initially it was literally twice a week. Twice a week, all hands on deck. Call anybody who's available. Call in that day. If you can't make it, we're having one on. You know, two days from now, just to say here's the latest, here's what's going on, here's what's, here's what we know, here's what we don't. And you see the the all of a sudden, through this intentional communication, regular intentional communication that people start getting aligned, people start rowing the boat in the same direction and then deliberately right, asking for feedback and then saying no-transcript annual meeting, to find out that something hasn't been working for 10 months. We're only waiting 30 days and can pivot really quickly.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I love that you shared that, because that's a lot of the part of the work we do as the Culture Think Tank, but also within our analytic performance solutions, is looking for that consistent feedback every 30 days, and I love that you've created not only a structure but something to be extremely proactive across the board, versus reactive, as you said, where six to 12 months has passed and everyone's like, well, that doesn't really matter anymore and we're getting consistent, constant feedback so that you and the leadership can adjust, pivot, make better decisions. So is there anything else you'd like to share with other leaders as we wrap up today?
Adam Povlitz:Yeah, and kind of throughout this conversation and just kind of think. You know, I've had to think about my career at to prepare for our conversation a little bit today and I realized that every time I've reached one of those inflection points or plateaus, I guess that I couldn't push past. I think instinctively you want to review the process and go like, okay, what else can we do differently, what else can we do better? But in reality it always was a person. It was always a who problem, not a how problem. It was always who do we need to help us get to the next level here, rather than trying to sharpen the pencil even sharper or make the wheel even rounder, because no, no, we needed more people who could think on the level of where we wanted to be versus where we were, so that we weren't spinning our wheels. And ultimately, investing in the right people pays off.
William Gladhart:Absolutely Well. I think that's some really great advice for other leaders is thinking about. Probably like yourself, I tend to go back to that process and performance piece because it's sometimes easier than the people. But, as you said, putting the right people on the team, positioning it for growth, makes all the difference in the world.
William Gladhart:Adam, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Levers podcast today. Thank you so much for your insights, my pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Lovers podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www. theculturethinktank. com, or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.
