Greg Templeman: The Courage to Lead
Utah Business Magazine honored the 2021 CEOs of the year on March 25, 2021 at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. The event honored “Chief Executive Officers who have led their organizations with strength, courage, and endurance and have made it their mission to change the way we do business in Utah.”
Sunpro’s President, Greg Templeman, was among the honorees this year.
As President, Greg oversees the operations, management, and strategic direction of a company with 14 locations across Utah and Idaho. The locations range in size and function from large lumber yards and truss and door production facilities to small retail hardware stores.
Greg never expected to be the CEO of a building materials company. He started his career in international business, working all over the world for SpaceKraft, a Weyerhaeuser and later an international paper company. After living in New York for eight years SpaceKraft re-located Greg and his family to Utah, much to his wife’s approval. They love Utah and Sunpro and have no plans to ever move again.
One of Greg’s proudest accomplishments at Sunpro has been influencing the culture of the company in a positive way. There is a tendency in the workplace to treat others differently based on their position or title. At Sunpro we try to treat everyone the same regardless of position and this effort is beautifully embodied by Sunpro managers. We aspire to follow the advice of your mom or dad when they cited the golden rule as it relates to siblings, friends and in Sunpro’s case, co-workers – treat others the way you would like to be treated. Much like outward facing differentiators (like the Sunpro rewards program, blending pricing, and objective pricing profiles), the culture at Sunpro has become both an outward and inward facing differentiator – people want to work for Sunpro, and they stay. That is unique in the building materials space.
Another notable accomplishment is the greatly improved quality and delivery date reliability of the Lindon truss operation. Only four years ago disorganization, disgruntled employees, and irate customers was an apt description for Lindon truss. It became so bad that Greg had to inform loyal Sunpro customers that they would honor their orders in the system but could not supply them for an undefined period while they paused operations to restore date integrity in their production schedule and trained new designers. Greg recalls, “It was absolutely devastating to hear customers say they would never come back to Sunpro.”
Thanks to the leadership and grit of Joe Cranford, Location Manager and Sam Garcia, Design Manager, both new to their position during this crisis, they righted the ship. They reworked the schedule, hired more designers, and committed to delivering a quality truss pack on time, every time. Now when builders are given a delivery date, they get their trusses on that day. And every single customer they wanted back came back to Sunpro. Says Greg, “When you commit to a value or service, you have to deliver on that.”
When asked about his time at Sunpro, Greg says, “People ask me what my best experience has been working at Sunpro, and my answer is always the people – customers, suppliers, and employees. My best experiences have all been with people: whether on a rewards trip with customers, safety lunch with employees, or price negotiation with suppliers. It’s the people that make Sunpro such a great place to work.”
