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By R.V. Baugus
As the interview continues, you listen
not only to Frank Russo’s words, but also for a ringing bell that would
signify the end of one class session and the beginning of another.
As Russo passionately speaks on the subjects of professional development and
leadership — with an understanding that can only be culled from spending
more than three decades in the public assembly facility management industry
— you cast a glance over his shoulder expecting to see a well-used teaching
chalkboard.
Heck, as you sit and soak in the enlightened words, you even feel a trace of
guilt that you did not at the very least bring an apple to the setting that
has turned into a learning laboratory.
It is then that you realize that any location is a working classroom for
Frank Russo, a senior vice president for Global Spectrum, a subsidiary of
Comcast-Spectacor. Whether it’s talking about how the Public Assembly
Facility Management School at Oglebay has grown in its 20 years of
existence; why it is crucial that city and government entities understand
the intricacies of public assembly facility management; the role of Global
Spectrum facility managers in sharing their knowledge on college campuses;
or just plain old why he feels like giving back his time and energy to the
industry, Frank Russo’s career remains an open book, ready to take on the
next chapter in what assuredly will be another learning adventure.
“I was just reading a book called The Purple Cow,” says Russo, as if on cue.
“It talks about how increasingly competitive the world marketplace is and
how in order to really be successful you need to be remarkable. You need to
stand out. Leaders within defined industries are people who can make their
company stand out, be remarkable, the kind of company that generates a
positive word of mouth and has the backup to deliver what it promises.”
As a leader within his organization and a champion of professional
development, Russo stands out like few have in the industry. Despite his
wealth of experience in the business, Russo believes it is important that he
continue to immerse himself in education, not only for his own career but to
help pave the path for generations of facility managers to come.
“Professional development is critical,” he says. “It is a life-long
commitment to an industry that you feel passionate about. It’s not only what
you can learn from others, but also what you can teach others.
“Becoming involved in IAAM is critical, because a lot of our members have
incredible gifts to offer. People who have been through the horrors of a
Hurricane Katrina have opened up a whole new sphere of awareness in our
industry. They have important things to tell us that could set the tone for
many different types of catastrophes that could happen not just in
hurricane-prone areas but throughout the United States and throughout the
world.”
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Russo in a meeting with the
Body of Knowledge team |
Practicing What He
Teaches
It is an established fact that leaders lead by example. Given that, Russo is
someone who practices what he teaches. He has been with the Body of
Knowledge since its inception in 2000 and serves as its chair, and he was
the original chair and is still an active member of the Board of Education.
Russo has served on the IAAM Foundation and was one of the original Oglebay
faculty members and served as chair of the Board of Regents of that group.
He has been active at the district level and has served as a district vice
president and membership chair. Russo remains a regular participant in
district, conference and specialty meetings.
“It probably goes back to my years at the Hartford Civic Center when I
formed a relationship with Guy Lewis, who was chair of the department of
sports studies at the University of Massachusetts,” says Russo. “He would
call me and ask if he could bring his sports management course down to the
civic center to just show them what an active building looked like.”
Even in the mid-1970s Russo had questions about
the industry that needed fast answers.
“The students who came to our building were taking a three-hour credit
course in a sports management program,” says Russo. “I talked to Guy Lewis
about how facility management really is a profession, maybe more so than he
realized because his end was always on sports management. You know, why
don’t they have facility management courses with a sports study course
underneath it? Why is the tail wagging the dog here?”
 So
Russo did the only thing he could do: He taught the course at UMass for
eight years beginning in 1982, but experienced frustration because “there
was really no book that could walk a student, both at the graduate and
undergraduate level, through what a facility manager actually does and is
responsible for and how one would perform those duties and
responsibilities.”
Russo’s thirst for continuing education remains unquenched today. Despite
his many accomplishments and achievements in the industry, he understands
that he must continue to reinvent himself, remain current and remain
relevant.
“You can’t tell the same old stories over and over again,” he says. “You
need to be current with your knowledge and your ability to manage a
multimillion-dollar asset on behalf of your client, your city, your
employer. If you’re not prepared to do that, then I think that puts you at a
competitive disadvantage. It could put your employer at risk. It could put
the lives of people that attend your buildings at risk. You have to be
knowledgeable in all phases of facility management. Knowledge is not just
old knowledge, but current knowledge.”
Teaching Tip #1: Get Knowledge Early
Born and raised in Hartford, Frank Russo Jr. knew early on that
he wanted to become a teacher. As a youth Russo played a mean trumpet in
addition to basketball and baseball, when he wasn’t in the classroom. He
received his Bachelor of Arts degree in history from St. Michael’s College
in Vermont in 1968 and one year later earned a Master of Arts degree in
public administration from the University of Connecticut.
With the Vietnam War at its height in 1968 and his draft status uncertain,
Russo thought his graduate degree with an emphasis on city management would
be particularly useful. Of course, he no sooner received his degree than he
received notice to immediately report to the draft board.
He had already started a job by that time with the state department of
community affairs, where his job was to consult for local governments in
Connecticut and provide a consulting service to small towns and cities in
the state that didn’t have enough resources to do their own planning.
One such job was in Glastonbury, where he now lives. Russo came to know Tony
Shookas, the assistant city manager in Glastonbury, and had to give him the
news that he had been drafted.
“At that time, if you wanted to get into the reserves or the National Guard,
the line was about three miles long,” said Russo. “Tony told me, ‘If you
speak French or play the trumpet, I’ll have a place for you because you
probably don’t know this, but I’m also Col. Tony Shookas in the 76th
Division, Army Reserve Unit.’ ”
After an audition Russo became part of the 76th Army Reserve Band and
performed his active duty at Fort Dix. “I wasn’t a conscientious objector or
anything like that,” Russo stresses. “I was ready to go.”
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(l to r) Global Spectrum Chief
Operating Officer John Page,
Global Spectrum President Michel Sauers, Global Spectrum
Senior Vice President Frank Russo, Global Spectrum Senior Vice
President Convention Centers Tom Mobley and Front Row
Marketing Services President Dick Sherwood |
“It is worth noting that Russo was presented
a trumpet when he received the Joseph J. Anzivino Distinguished Allied
Member Award in 2003 at the IAAM Annual Conference in New Orleans, where he
played a stirring version of “Nearer My God To Thee.” “In another life I
would like to come back and play with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band,” says
Russo.
But it was that early knowledge of what he wanted to be that helped launch
Russo’s career.
Teaching Tip #2: Be Confident When The Roof Caves
In (Literally)
After finishing active duty in 1975, Russo worked for the City of Hartford,
first as a budget analyst and later as assistant city manager, where one of
his responsibilities was to oversee the final development of the new
Hartford Civic Center. The building manager resigned before the venue even
opened, and Russo found himself as the acting director of the
arena/convention center.
Byron Trimble was hired from San Diego to become the facility manager, and
he convinced Russo to stay on as his permanent assistant general manager.
But in May 1976 Trimble died of a heart attack while at the facility and
Russo’s original “temporary” assignment became one that lasted nine years.
On January 18, 1978, at approximately 4 a.m., the roof of the Hartford Civic
Center collapsed. At the time, Russo, still a relative infant in the
industry, was at an IAAM district meeting in West Palm Beach when he was
phoned with the news. “I couldn’t conceive what they were talking about,”
says Russo. “I got on a flight and was back in Hartford by 11 a.m. I came in
the back door of the loading dock and could not believe what I saw.
“This wasn’t a hole, this was the entire roof of a 12,000-seat coliseum. A
lot of things go through your mind. People were saying there would be
lawsuits, that this building was a white elephant, that it was never going
to be rebuilt.”
Russo, however, exuded confidence that the facility would not only reopen,
but would be bigger and better. His belief came to fruition when the venue
opened its doors to a Hartford Whalers NHL game in February 1980. “The
strategy we had to employ to get people to forget about that darn building
was to ask them what they would like to see in the new arena. People wanted
handrails, bigger scoreboards, more restrooms. We kept emphasizing positive
public relations points and looked at the future.”
It was determined that a faulty engineering design contributed to the
collapse. Just hours earlier Connecticut and Massachusetts had played a
basketball game before 6,000 fans. It was the middle game of three
consecutive scheduled nights of basketball. The night before the college
game the Boston Celtics had played an NBA game, and the day of the collapse
a high school game was to take place.
“If you don’t believe in miracles, believe in miracles,” says Russo. “I do.
Some of the beams came down like arrows. They would hit a seat and go
through three feet of concrete then 30 feet down into the floor of the
exhibition hall to create an eight or nine inch dent in a solid ground level
concrete floor. You can imagine what would have happened if people were
there.”
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Russo and his wife, Andrea,
celebrate a birthday |
Teaching Tip #3:
Build Relationships
Russo’s vast experience includes forming Monitor Productions, a company that
consulted to municipal governments and ran corporate-sponsored events. He
would go on to become vice president of sales and client services for Ogden
Entertainment, during which time the company increased its client list from
12 to 70 managed venues worldwide. Russo also worked simultaneously as
Ogden’s vice president of international operations with responsibilities in
England, Germany, Belgium and Australia.
Those global experiences taught Russo the importance of knowing different
markets and what will and won’t work for those markets. “I think companies
find out who their market is before they know what their product or their
service is,” says Russo. “And then once they figure out a market they want
to go after, they develop something to reach that targeted market. I think
it’s a necessary thing, not necessarily a good thing.
“Part of my job is to not only develop the business, but to maintain our
relationships with those clients. As The Purple Cow pointed out, in the
business world you’ve got people that are prospects, customers, loyal
customers or former customers. You don’t want any former customers. You want
to convert prospects into customers and then rapidly into loyal customers.”
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Russo at the opening of Wells
Fargo Arena in Des
Moines, IA. (l to r) Polk County Supervisor
John Mauro, Global Spectrum President Michel Sauers,
Polk County Supervisor Tom Hockensmith and Russo. |
Teaching Tip #4:
Share Knowledge
Early in his career Russo expressed the frustration that no valid documents
detailing practices and principles existed within the public assembly
facility management industry. He recalls that while teaching the course at
UMass his lecture book was basically an accumulation of a number of IAAM
materials, and that as the years went by Oglebay monographs were
incorporated into the curriculum. “But it was never verified scientific
information that you could call our ‘official body of knowledge,’ ” he says.
For all practical purposes, that dearth of information ended in 2000 with
the formation of the Body of Knowledge, a group that has been together since
its inception and consists of Russo, Pat Fitzgerald, Debbie Kling, Lynda
Reinhart, Rob Seitz, Rodney Smith, Bob Stewart and faculty advisors Philip
Rothschild and Scott Wysong.
A second edition of the Public Assembly Facility Management: Principles and
Practices textbook is nearing conclusion, and Russo believes it should be
must-reading for not only industry practitioners but for city governments
and municipalities.
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Russo received the Joseph J.
Anzivino
Distinguished Allied Member Award– not to
mention a trumpet – at the 2003Annual
Conference in New Orleans. |
“We will add three chapters,” says Russo.
“One will be on life safety, another on shelter management and a fun chapter
on the unique differences worldwide and how they compare to practices in the
U.S.”
Harking back to the days when Russo taught at college, the venue managers at
the 10 Global Spectrum managed university facilities teach a class at their
college. “If a university doesn’t have a facility management course we
volunteer to teach one,” says Russo. “There is plenty of substance to be
taught at the college level. There’s clearly a demand and it’s becoming a
more and more popular type of profession for young people to enter.”
As for his imprint in the industry, Russo says, “Maybe my legacy is going to
be that I made time for others and tried to share what I know as other
people have shared with me. That I’ve been aggressive in this industry in
trying to help compile what we all know to a format that’s usable so that
all of our lives could be enhanced by virtue of having a recognized
profession that’s more valuable than it’s currently given by many cities and
municipalities and universities in terms of its perceived level of
importance, responsibility and compensation.”
Class dismissed.
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Russo, front row, center,
along with other instructors from the Public
Assembly Facility Management School at Oglebay, circa 1990. |
Frank Russo has worked from one corner of the
globe to another, and now he fittingly enough works for Global Spectrum. In
his far-ranging interview held at IAAM Headquarters, Russo touched on a
number of subjects of value to his career and personal life.
On leadership:
“It is part of who you are and how you come across. It’s your ability to
understand your profession and the business you are in and to have a vision
that you can communicate and get others to buy in to. If you are the type of
person who knows your good points and your bad points and how to hire around
those, then as a company and a team you will have all your bases covered and
a clear idea of where you really want to go.”
On Comcast-Spectacor’s “How Ya Doin’?” program:
“It’s part and parcel of our whole culture and the way our employees
are taught to treat customers at the point of contact. We’ve turned the
pyramid structure upside down so that the senior management is there to
enable the people at the point of contact with customers to actually provide
great customer service.”
On the importance of the CFE designation:
“I feel very passionately that IAAM members should be recognized as
professionals, not as someone who knew the mayor’s relative or a cousin of
the mayor or city manager, but a true professional that’s been educated and
trained, and has interned and been certified by the IAAM. City managers
wouldn’t hire a health director that wasn’t a doctor and they wouldn’t hire
an architect that wasn’t a member of AIA. Why would they hire a facility
manager that wasn’t a CFE?”
On strides the industry has made:
“From a private management company’s perspective, when we get an account
there is a tremendous focus for the client to have approval rights of our
designated general manager of the facility. I believe more and more cities,
especially those that privatize, see and understand and know that the key to
success really is the onsite general manager and how qualified that person
is, how they have previously performed and what their reputation is in the
industry. Are they a magnet for business within a category that they are
working, whether it’s a theater, convention center, arena or stadium? Do
they have the leadership qualities to understand what the client wants out
of a facility and to assemble their team to achieve those goals, as opposed
to becoming an egotist that has their own vision of what needs to be done
despite what the client wants, thereby creating tension rather than
harmony?”
On advice to those entering the industry:
“I would tell young people that when an opportunity presents itself, take
advantage of it. You have one chance to make a good impression. I think I
took advantage of it and made the most of what my abilities would allow me
to do but I recognized that I knew nothing.”
On what he enjoys best about the business:
“I know it’s a cliché, but there is truly a different scenario every
day. You are at the forefront of making things happen. I like the pressure
of ‘there’s no tomorrow.’ There’s nothing that smells worse than a day-old
empty seat. I love the impact that our buildings have on the economic and
social vitality of the city, and I like the business itself because of its
diversity. We all participate sometimes competing for the challenge of the
public’s attention in an increasingly scary world or a world that’s almost
preoccupied with the home entertainment and capabilities offered there.”
On how the industry has changed:
“Arenas have become very complex revenue generators where the focus becomes
more and more on the hospitality for VIP seating, premium seating and how
important that is to the successful economics of the building. When I go to
the Wachovia Center and I see what Peter Luukko and John Page and others
have done in terms of tastefully generating revenue every conceivable way to
get the maximum result without gouging the public is incredible. It really
does take a talent.”
On professional and personal influences in his life:
“Dr. Cleveland Williams, Professor William O’Berne, Dr. Karl
Bosworth, Ed Curtin, Byron Trimble, Dr. Homer Babbidge, Lt. Governor Bob
Killian, Skip Bronson,Alan Hutensky, Doug Logan, Harvey Lister, Peter Luukko,
Mich Sauers, Guy Lewis, Bill Cunningham, Ray Ward, Dexter King, Bob Stewart,
Dr. Don Hancock, Chris Silver, Harold Bannon, Pam Wentworth. And with deep
appreciation … wife Andrea, daughters, Kara and Gina and grandsons Steve and
Nick.”
R.V. Baugus is editor of Facility Manager. |
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