4 minute read
THE LOWDOWN
by LABI_Biz
Edguardo Tenreiro, President and CEO of Baton Rouge General
FRESH PERSPECTIVE BY MARIE CENTANNI
Edgardo Tenreiro shares his Venezuelan experience and the importance of free enterprise
Edgardo Tenreiro, President and CEO of Baton Rouge General, grew up in Venezuela in the 1970s during what he calls the heyday of democracy. “It’s a time we’ll never go back to in terms of freedom and prosperity in that country.” Stephen Waguespack caught up with Tenreiro recently while recording an episode of LABI’s podcast, “The Biz.” In it, Tenreiro speaks on everything from free enterprise, the economy and hospital operations to the war in Ukraine. Read the excerpt from the podcast to be inspired:
Tenreiro began his career with Baton Rouge General during the historic flood of 2016, what he calls a “Black Swan” event–a metaphor for an unpredictable occurrence characterized by extreme rarity, with profound impact. Waguespack asked him about taking the lead during such a crisis. Tenreiro’s answer: de-centralized management that forces a CEO to “stay out of the way.”
“How do you make an organization anti-fragile? It’s not just robust which resists anti-stress, but it’s one that becomes stronger with stress. So I always thought, ‘How do I stress, internally, my system and my team to make sure that when unexpected events happen like the flood, we’re ready to react, and that after the flood we’re actually stronger than we were before the flood?’ That kind of philosophy was already in the DNA of the organization, and it’s almost the opposite of what you typically think a CEO does – making the organization stronger by making sure that everybody who’s inside the organization is working at their maximum capability, without central control and direction. They know the mission, where we’re going, your job at that point is to stay out of the way.” Waguespack probed this concept a bit more in terms of leadership style, and Tenreiro explored the similarity between capitalism and good management, not just in business.
“I think it’s true of a lot of things. It’s true of the economy as a whole, and that’s why I think capitalism is better than socialism and a centrally directed economy, because no bureaucrat at a central office can know all the intricacies of what’s happening at the lowest level of the economy.”
“If you have that philosophy and you apply it to your management style and your management team, you can accomplish things you wouldn’t with a centrally managed system. And that gives people a chance to display what they’re best at. Your role is then nurturing talent and creating systems and structures that allow that talent to flourish. And then when the flood happens, you simply put a command center in place and you let the team take over. At that point, you’re more of a nuisance: You’re up there cheering people on and breaking barriers if you have to break them, but for the most part you have to stand back.” Tenriero then reflected on his teenage years in Venezuela, where his parents were heavily involved in politics, and the main forces at play were left-leaning political parties with very little free enterprise approach. He came to the U.S. with that same left-leaning foundation, but after seeing in his own country what slowly evolved—from nationalization to full-blown socialist-communist dictatorship—and noticing seeds of that socialism here, he grew cautious, and vigilant. “It was a full-blown dictatorship with all the negatives that come with that – the whole capital structure destroyed, capacity to produce oil and refine oil was destroyed, and there was a lot of cronyism and corruption. That’s what you get.” “In the U.S., I began to see more and more of these left-leaning philosophies
Stephen Waguspack, of government intervention, both the left President and CEO of LABI and the right wanting to intervene, centralizing power in Washington for their own profits. It’s this relentless movement towards centralizing things in Washington and to more and more government intervention until it eventually destroys what’s great about this country. It might not happen right away. It took 30, 40 years in Venezuela, but I see the situation and it worries me.” Ultimately, that worry is what caused Tenreiro to become active in LABI, after he visited Waguespack and shared his story, his concern and his desire to be part of a team upholding the principles of free enterprise here in Louisiana. “Wow, this organization was built to promote free enterprise. It’s at the core of your DNA so I thought, ‘I want to be a part of that, because I think it matches my management philosophy, and I think the board and other CEOs understand that there’s something there to protect.’”
