Tony Spada is president and CEO of AAA Western and Central New York. The local chapter of the American Automobile Association covers 25 Upstate counties and has 880,000 members. Spada leads about 650 employees working throughout the region.
He was promoted to the top job in 2012 and started at the local chapter of AAA as an accountant when he was 25. This August, he’ll celebrate 39 years with the association, which traces its roots back to 1902.
Don’t think longevity means Spada or AAA are stuck in a rut. He describes lasting success that is built on enthusiastic acceptance of change. When a leader aligns values, maintains a diverse staff, and listens closely, it fosters innovation, which leads to longevity.
“A good leader puts the company or the organization in the position that it will soar after they leave,” Spada said. “That’s what we should all strive for — for the organization to be around well after we’re gone. Good leaders put together a group of people to help the business survive and thrive.”
Most people probably know about AAA’s roadside assistance, but give me the elevator speech.
Well, it's going to be a long elevator ride. (Laughter) We're the largest member-services organization in the country. Nationally, we have about 60 million members. When I started, there were about 210 AAA's across the country. Today there are 26. There were a lot of little different auto clubs, and over time the little ones merged with others.
We’re known as the undisputed leader in roadside assistance, but in Upstate New York we’re also the largest leisure travel agency. Last year, we sold about $115 million in travel-agency sales alone. Obviously, this year it’s significantly lower.
In 2006, we started an insurance agency — personal lines, auto, and home. We sell $40 million in insurance policy premiums a year.
We have a lot of discounts and rewards so members can save money.
One of the things we're most proud of is that we are an advocate for traffic safety. On the side, we help many school districts do driver education. Plus we have a point-reduction class so people can have lower insurance premiums.
We’re also pretty proud that we haven’t raised the price of our basic membership dues since 2011.
If you can fit this in somewhere, I’d like your readers to know that the people at AAA that serve Central New York and Western New York all live in Central New York and in Western New York. I think that’s the elevator speech — we may be up to 18th floor. (Laughter)
I became familiar with AAA decades ago when my parents would get a printed TripTik.
We still do them. And matter of fact, I have three people in the office today doing TripTik demands for people, especially now with Covid-19, because a lot of people don't want to get on airplanes. They may want to do a two-day, three-day trip. So, TripTiks are still there. If you download our app, you can get digital TripTiks right on your smartphone. It has all the speaking features.
How can a leader spark innovation in an organization?
The worst thing a leader can do is think they know it all when they don't.
Change is inevitable, so innovation is inevitable. An organization isn't the same as it was 10 years ago, and it's not going to be the same 10 years from now.
We always have to be thinking: What's it going to look like 10 years from now?
Innovation is the way forward.
It's up to executives to do the constant investigation as to what similar industries are doing. What is the most up-to-date thing? It's not necessarily the shiny new object.
Technology is huge. Business intelligence now is super huge. We have hired what we call a business scientist, who basically goes through all the data that we have. There are things that we do from a business intelligence standpoint that put us in position to serve our members.
In our road service area, we have two programs where one is a predictive analytics program. It takes three years of data. That data includes weather, days of a week, month of the year, events that are going on. It tracks the trends of where breakdowns are. It tells us that on a day typical to today that breakdowns in the last couple of years have been here, here and here, and you should position your trucks at these spots to get service to your members quicker and better.
When you use a statistical basis, it brings you closer to the calls than if you based it just on what you thought you knew. That's called predictive analytics.
Then we have another thing called automatic vehicle locator, which tells us that, gee, if your car broke down, let's say on I-81 near LaFayette, what truck do we have that's closest to you that can get to you the quickest? We do have dispatchers who can personally dispatch things, but we use computers more and more.
To lead people effectively, it sounds like you need to let them know that change will be necessary and that change is coming. Is that right?
That is exactly right. And show them the examples so it brings it home to them. Blackberries, 35-millimeter film cameras, VCRs, and Sony Walkmans were all replaced by the iPhone. Does anybody want to go back to those other things? So look toward your business and say: What do we have to embrace now that is different than what we're doing?
For instance, at some point, we're going to have a heck of a lot more electric vehicles on the road than we do today.
That's going to create different challenges for our road service. When your car breaks down now in the middle of the road, we can get your car on a flatbed. When an electric car, a Tesla, breaks on the road, it doesn't move. The wheels don't turn on the electric vehicle. There are different things that we have to do.
New batteries are going to be a heck of a lot stronger than the batteries that we have now. We’re going to need to have mobile electric charging stations so that we can charge cars on the side of the road.
All this stuff is coming.
And then of course, we talk about autonomous features going into vehicles. They’re in vehicles now — I consider us to be in a semi-autonomous period. At this point, I can drive my car on the Thruway, and it won’t steer for me, but if I drift it’ll rattle my steering wheel and say, Hey, grab the wheel back.
These things are coming, and we better be prepared for them.
Tell me about growing up and early leadership roles.
I grew up in Williamsville, which is a suburb of Buffalo. I went to Catholic grammar school, high school, and college. I wasn't in governance in school or stuff like that. I was captain of the soccer team in high school and played a lot of baseball. But I don't consider that to be a leader. You just kinda did stuff.
I think leadership gravitates toward people that make decisions, and I've not lacked for making a decision every now and then. I think it kind of accrues to you over time. You can learn a lot from everybody.
For me, a lot of early influences came from sports — coaches. I gravitated not toward the yeller coach, but the coach that would take you aside and show you things and teach you things. I always felt more comfortable with the person, the coach, that would compliment you to inspire you as opposed to yelling at you.
Somebody might say, “Hey, that guy’s beating you all day,” it doesn’t make you feel good.
When a coach comes up to you and says, “Hey, you’re a lot faster than that guy — don’t let him beat you,” you have a tendency to go a lot harder. It’s because you know the coach thinks you’re better, you’re fast.
So I always gravitated toward people that inspired through positive comments as opposed to negative comments.
I went to Canisius College (Class of 1980). My father was an electrician, a guy that worked six days a week with five children. So before I went to Canisius College, I went to Erie Community College. I majored in accounting, and then I got an MBA from Canisius.
I went to a Jesuit college, and the Jesuits were pretty good about teaching philosophy. One of my philosophy professors (Father Ladislas Juhasz) taught us to make sure whatever purpose you decide is your purpose make sure it’s something that you’re going to stand behind for the rest of your life. It shouldn’t be something that is the flavor of the day.
I had a political science teacher (Michael Haselswerdt) who would add to that and say: If you have that purpose, stand up for it. Be strong. Why that purpose? Why do you care about it? Build your own case so that your decision making will be easier once you have those parameters already in sight.
What's your advice to become an effective leader?
It’s all about people. It’s all about making sure that you have people with the right philosophies that are aligned with you. They don’t have to have the same viewpoint. Matter of fact, it’s better if they have a different vantage point, where they’re seeing things from a different way. But they need to have the same philosophies that you have. I used the word philosophies, but maybe a better word is values. You want people that understand this is the direction that we need to get to. Then, you can debate what it is that you need to do in order to get there.
Philosophy and values are important, and then you need people at different vantage points. They come from different demographics, different genders, urban, suburban, rural and race. All those people are going to give you insights you didn’t think about, and it allows you to make better decisions. I think leadership is about making decisions, but it’s also about listening to people so that you can make better decisions. Listening is a great thing.
I will also say to people that are running businesses: Businesses run on cash. You can't lose sight of that.
It can’t be the only thing that you think about because you have to provide exceptional services and exceptional products, but you have to make sure that you build enough into your margins so that you have money for investment. If there’s anything that we know for sure in business it’s that things are going to change and you have to have the resources, whether it’s human or monetary resources, to be flexible.
You have to work hard. You have to work harder than the competition all the time. The moment that you think you've made it and you start coasting, well, the competition's coming up behind you.
I think Satchel Paige had a saying: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
So if you want to lead, you work harder than everybody else.
The last thing I'd say is communicate, communicate, communicate. I don't mean by email. Spend time with people. Luckily, I have an iWatch. It'll tell me when to get up and walk around. When it tells me to get up and walk around, I do exactly that. I walk around the office. I make sure I run into people.
When you do that, you learn people’s names and you hear what’s on their minds. People like that you know their name. That means a lot. Show some caring for everybody. It makes you feel better when the leader takes a personal interest in you and your growth. It starts with values. I think that’s the most important thing.
What qualities do you see in leaders you admire?
They're typically people who are well respected in the community. I think it's important for people to be involved in the community and to make sure that they have a willingness to give back in the community.
They can tell a story about what that company is doing.
I admire members on our board of directors. I learn how they handled situations. They handle things with a calm demeanor. I think everybody makes better decisions when they're calm and not when they're frantic.
What attributes do you see in poor leadership?
It’s like a 180-degree difference from what I told you. People that don’t listen. People that don’t take a personal interest in you. Someone who is only concerned about how they come out, as opposed to how the whole organization comes out.
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. Last week featured Beth Race, inventor, founder and CEO of Eco-Baggeez, patented, resealable sandwich bags made of sustainable and biodegradable paper.
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