Leadership 7th Edition by Andrew DuBrin, Ann Fisher, Andrew DuBrin

Exercise 1

A large number of employees cheered when insider Martin Mucci was named president and chief executive officer of Paychex Inc. in 2010. Paychex is an established provider of payroll, human resource, and benefits outsourcing services for small to mediumsized business firms. Company founder and philanthropist Tom Golisano said "Marty Mucci has earned the opportunity to be the CEO in this company, based on his character, his level of accomplishment, and his ability to be an inspiring leader." John Morphy, senior vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer commented, "Having Marty means you have someone people will respect, and he spends a lot of time with the people and cares about them. At the same time, he'll make decisions he needs to make on an expedient basis."
Tor Constantino, a former colleague at a communications company, added that Paychex is bound to succeed with Mucci at the head. "He's a force of nature from a business perspective," Constantino said. "He has a very savvy background and an excellent grasp of customers and employees and how to get the most out of individuals. For a top-quality organization to land such a stellar executive as Marty is only going to mean good things for Paychex in the future."
In accepting the CEO assignment, Mucci said, "I am excited about the opportunity to take Paychex to the next level of performance. We have more than 12,000 dedicated employees and an experienced management team, and I look forward to working together to build in the company's history of success."
Mucci said he like to be involved in just about every facet of the organization, and stay on top of almost everything. "Board members were looking for a longterm builder for the business, to grow the business and do it in a steady, continuous run," said Mucci, who has been with Paychex since 2002 as senior vice president of operations. "I believe I can do that and I accept the challenge to continually build the company over the long haul."
Mucci said that Paychex will prosper through growing its client base through better sales execution, as well as having the right products. He added that the company planned to grow its payroll client base through acquisition and sales. Paychex was also exploring whether there were markets other than payroll and human resources outsourcing it could penetrate. Mucci wondered if there were other things like offering accounting software and credit-card processing that small businesses need.
In talking about the CEO role, Mucci said that he relished having responsibility for getting results. He pointed out that having already had oversight of 8,000 of the 12,000 employees he had a good sense of the people.
"Paychex and the culture that's been built over almost 40 years will see changes but it'll remain mostly the same. You don't break something that's successful. I got into the job to make a difference, and that is just more success and the long-term growth of the business. If it takes changes in people or processes or products, we'll do it."
Mucci holds an MBA from the Simon School of the University of Rochester, and was previously vice president of operations for Paychex. His other business experience includes being the CEO of a telephone company, and the president of telephone operations for Frontier Communications.
How qualified does Mucci appear to be to hold the CEO position of Paychex?