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Kandel on good bosses
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September 29, 2000: 7:56 a.m. ET
You don't have to be an S.O.B. to succeed: Nice guys can finish first
By CNNfn Financial Editor Myron Kandel
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The stock market was having a horrendous September (up until yesterday), companies were warning of disappointing earnings, dot.coms were collapsing or announcing massive layoffs, and autumn was getting off to a gloomy start. That is, until the other day, when a story came our way that warmed my heart and restored my faith in the basic decency of humankind.
It was word that a man who had inherited his grandfather's business and helped build it to new heights was now selling it to an outside company for big bucks. But rather than taking all the money and running, he was giving the business's 325 employees some of the proceeds -- $18 million worth.
 I must confess I have a soft spot for such people. Some day, if I live long enough, I plan to write a book, tentatively titled, "Nice Guys Can Finish First," celebrating the thesis that you don't have to be an S.O.B. to succeed in business -- or elsewhere. It always bothered me when years ago Fortune magazine used to run articles on the toughest bosses in America, suggesting that you had to be mean to run a successful big business. (That, of course, was before CNN became part of that magazine's parent company.) And of course, you don't have to be a softy to be a good boss.
At any rate, Charlie Butcher appears to be a really nice guy, who appreciates the people who work for his company. "We love our employees," he told CNN on Wednesday, stressing his feeling that they're the people "who do all the work for us."
Butcher, who's now 84 and lives in Colorado, took over in the 1950s the company his grandfather founded in Boston in 1880 to make a paste wax used to polish floors. The younger Butcher expanded it into the commercial cleaning business as well. It now has plants in Marlborough, Mass., Compton, Calif., and Alsip, Ill.
He decided to sell the company because he did not have the capital needed to keep it competitive and also to raise funds for a charitable research organization he founded three years ago. But eschewing what he said were higher offers, he agreed to sell it to another family-owned company, S.C. Johnson & Son, which traces its history back 114 years. (Neither company is disclosing the sales price.) The Butcher company will operate independently with the same name and employees.
And those employees are happy folks these days. Butcher has distributed bonus checks totaling $18 million. Nobody's giving out exact figures, but he says long-time employees received about one and a half times their annual salaries. And these were not only the front-office hot shots, but factory-floor workers as well.
I agree with Butcher's philosophy that happy workers are much more productive and are less prone to mistakes, absenteeism and other problems, which means that being nice can also be good business. But his ultimate "niceness" came after he sold the company.
I only wish that some of those chief executives who are so outrageously overcompensated these days would make sure that the largesse they receive is spread around to the lower ranks as well. Meantime, my hat's off to Charlie Butcher. 
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