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For R. David Anacker, running the nation's largest building-maintenance company is a shirt-sleeve kind of job: Quite literally, he's got to get his hands dirty.
Like his company's work force of 26,000, the 50-year-old president and CEO of American Building Maintenance (ABM) has had to don a T-shirt, grab a broom, and apply a little elbow grease from time to time. ABM is a $424-million public company based in San Francisco. It offers eight different services, including its mainstay, janitorial services. Every day and night, a largely unseen work force in more than half the nation's cities and states vacuums, dusts, empties waste baskets and spiffs up the offices of corporate America.
"There's not a whole lot of sizzle or sex appeal to this business," Anacker says. "But that's OK because we don't demand that."
In fact, running ABM demands quite the opposite: a sense of humility and equanimity which comes from spending more time behind the scenes -- and under the desks -- than in the spotlight. It's not a place for overblown egos or genteel airs.
"You can't get carried away with being a CEO," he says. "Nobody jumps into his clothes. We all get dressed one sock at a time."
Characteristic of this philosophy, ABM maintains modest offices off the beaten track on Fell Street near the Van Ness corridor. There is no company dress code -- Anacker himself claims he bought his first gray pinstripe this year. Nor are there any committee meetings, executive lunchrooms and company manuals. And ask the electriciam who's sharing your elevator ride if he's ever met the company president and...