Peter Gifford is president of Cryomech, a company his father founded in 1963 while a professor at Syracuse University.
The company, with about 130 employees on Falso Drive in Mattydale, manufactures cryogenic equipment. Cryogenics is the branch of physics that deals with incredibly low temperatures -- at the temperature natural gas liquefies down to absolute zero where, hypothetically, molecular motion stops. That's about minus 459 Fahrenheit. Such low temperatures usually are measured on the Kelvin scale, in which absolute zero is 0 K.
Gifford talks passionately about his science, his company, and how his employees make Cryomech one of the best cyrogenic research companies in the world.
Gifford says boredom is the enemy of life and to succeed you must care deeply about your people, your product, your customers.
He says: "I would like to ask a question of people in general. To truly be a professional, don't you truly need to care about your work? And isn't the height of professionalism, when you're totally engaged in your work? You just can't be really good at anything if you're disengaging as it fits you."
Were you in leadership roles growing up?
Pretty much not.
My parents (Bill and Anne Gifford) moved around a lot. I was born in Washington, D.C., moved to Richland, Wash., Boulder, Colo. I went to first and half the second grade in Huntsville, Ala., in 1953-54. That's where they started NASA; my father had been brought down to make liquid rocket fuels. Then Bedford, Mass., and Lexington, Mass. I moved here when I was 12.
My dad was a cryogenic expert that came up with the Gifford-McMahon Cycle. He got brought to Syracuse University from a place where he was involved in making the liquid helium plants for the hydrogen bomb back in the 1950s. He ran the company on the side. I graduated from Syracuse, travelled around for a couple of years. I started out in math and physics and finished college in liberal arts. If you had my father, you were a physicist before you got out of high school.
Moving around as a child, I was most interested in fitting in. Being on teams -- being able to be part of the group -- was more important than leadership. I played on the Nottingham High School football team. I was happy on the team. I was a very good tennis player, but I didn't see the need to be competitively successful as an individual. But if you put me on a team, my teams were successful.
When did I first notice myself leading?
When accidents needed someone stepping up and leading. Like going off the road in the Sierra Nevadas, the Donner Pass, in a storm. I was there with a recent Vietnam vet -- he had just bought a new Volvo. There were two other students. The car went off the road in the snow. I jumped up, started doing things, and people followed me. And we made it through.
When my father got sick, a nasty form of cancer, I noticed that nobody here was leading. So I started, and people started to follow. When they didn't understand their job, I saw that it was my job to teach them.
Cyrogenicists generally don't live in Syracuse. They're everywhere around the world. I started making friends with people in Grenoble, France, or Oxford University, or Finland or Germany or Amsterdam or Japan -- anywhere there was business. They became my influences, many became my mentors, teaching and learning together as cryogenics progressed.
You mentioned teams --
That's what this whole company's about. In a knowledge-based company, there needs to be such fast sharing of information.
How do you operate it as a team?
If you want to be successful in business, the most important thing is to set up an operation where your employees can be successful.
I learned this from moving around a lot. I learned how to go to places and witness what actually is going on.
You're not there with pre-conceived notions. Then, if you've got some task, you can recognize why your employees are not being successful. Do they not understand the mission? Do they not have the tools? The training?
I start everything from The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's the basis of good team building.
You own Cryomech?
No. The company has gone ESOP. (An employee stock ownership plan, which gives a company's workforce ownership of the company.) Basically we took it ESOP a year ago.
Why?
I wanted to see it remain a thriving company. You can sell to venture capitalists. They're going to strip the company, and it's gone. That's what happens with small technical companies. You can sell to competitors, and my competitors would strip the company and it would be gone.
This company has been a very nice place for me to work and to develop and to have a worthwhile life. There are a lot of other employees who are invested like that. Why the hell take it away from them?
I just couldn't sell it. It wouldn't be the right thing to do.
You took over the business from your father.
My father died at 60 from cancer -- multiple myeloma. Competitors came to me and offered money for the patents, basically suggesting: You don't know what you're doing.
What I tried to do is copy my competitors. And it was a struggle. We just weren't getting anywhere.
Then an opportunity sort of showed up, about 1985. I went to a conference, just to explore.
A guy came up to me. My competitors were lined up giggling. This guy said, Hey listen, nobody else will build this system for me. Will you build this system for me?
It was an interesting device. They were making parts for testing liquid hydrogen rocket parts. They would take them out in the desert to test them. If they had a little friction, the liquid hydrogen would blow up and destroy the thing. So they wanted to use liquid Neon, which is liquid 6 degrees Kelvin above liquid hydrogen.
We had no idea that we could do what they were asking. By challenging myself, I learned an important lesson. To run a business, you need to be confident about your competence. You only get that from challenging yourself.
A lot of people are risk averse. Am I risk averse? Some places, yeah. I need to be comfortable with money and things like that.
That was the key message that formed our business. We've figured out what the niches are. Competitors supply the standard stuff. If you've got something you need developed in cryo-refrigerators and cryogenic products that nobody else will make, we'll make it. Out of that philosophy we developed a long list of products that have no competitors. And a company full of very competent cryogenicists.
I hear people say it's too difficult to do business in New York -- taxes, regulation, environmental rules.
I'm a fly fisherman. I fish all over the Catskills, Montana, South America -- just about everywhere. Therefore, I am not going to throw contaminants in the water. People do not have a right to do that.
To feel that you have the right to contaminate water for the people downstream -- where does that thinking even come from? If you think that way, then your neighbor has the right to come over and start using your front lawn as a latrine.
Everyone at Cryomech went to public school -- except for several who grew up in other countries. Who's made more money out of their education? Me or them?
Where would I be without these people? I would be nowhere.
Crack babies -- do they use Syracuse airport? I use that airport from Fed Ex to our personal trips 50 times a day. Let's be grown up. We need to pay for what we use.
Go to Nigeria. Go to India. Go to Peru under Alberto Fujimori in 1991. Maybe you'd respect what we've got here.
What are people talking about when they say they don't want to pay for it? The wealthier you are, the more you use of it, and the more you should pay. A lot of capitalists today can't see this? I am a capitalist. I borrow money, and I make money. I take risks, and I make money.
It pains me to see our electrical grid. To see the traffic jams around cities. To see the state of our railroad tracks. To see the state of our airports. These are things that an individual can't pay for. I am sure glad I got one national military and don't live in a place where warlords rule with guns. I've been there, and it sucks.
People come to America. You know why? Because this place is fantastic.
But let's face up to it and start working on this stuff so your kids have a first-world economy, so they have a first-rate national electrical grid, so they have first-rate stuff.
Yeah, I think government has a purpose. The government is not my enemy. They have never kept me from doing anything I needed to do to be successful.
Do I think government is difficult to run? Oh yeah. It is really hard. But we gotta face up to the fact that we need to pay for it.
UPDATES:
For Thanksgiving 2015, Peter Gifford was among the leaders talking about gratitude.
On Jan. 29, 2017, Peter Gifford passed away.
The weekly "CNY Conversation" features Q&A interviews about leadership, success, and innovation. The conversations are condensed and edited. To suggest a leader for a Conversation, contact Stan Linhorst at StanLinhorst@gmail.com.
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