Taking Over as Chief, Reluctantly December 9, 2004 By SHIRA BOSS-BICAK The New York Times Kerry Smithers and her husband, Will, were opposites who attracted. At Tradeware Systems, a financial-services software company that the couple built into a $7 million business over a decade, he was the visionary and she was the details person. As the company's president and chief executive, he delighted in meeting with clients and chasing deals. As the vice president, she wrote codes for the products she designed and fretted over day-to-day operations; she was so reticent that most clients had never met her. She had few friends and spent most of her free time caring for the couple's daughter, Trinity, now 5. Mr. Smithers, by contrast, would often skip out of work to fly his helicopter or hang out with fellow scuba divers or the attendant at the garage where he parked his Porsches. He was a self-educated mathematician and amateur scientist who bought an atomic clock and an electron microscope. Immersed in a self-designed course on genetics, he once announced to his brother that he planned to clone his cat. Employees described him as a ''mad genius,'' who was brilliant as well as joyous and generous. ''You have to be a poet to describe what it's like working with someone like that,'' said Andrzej Malachowicz, senior project manager at Tradeware. Somehow, the pluses and minuses of the couple's personalities zipped together in the workplace. They expanded the company from a two-person operation, with Mr. Smithers shuttling between their base in Boston and clients in New York, to a strong competitor, housed on a floor of Trump's office tower at 40 Wall Street. Then one side of the equation was removed and the equilibrium was broken. On Nov. 8, 2002, Mr. Smithers was presumed killed when his helicopter crashed into the ocean off Long Island. ''I felt like my Siamese twin was chopped off,'' Mrs. Smithers said. A thought that soon hit her, she said, was: ''Oh my God, I'm C.E.O. now. All the stuff that Will did for the company, who's going to do that now?'' It is a question that remains largely unanswered. For the last two years, Mrs. Smithers, 42, has steered the company. But she has also often presided over office-place dissension, and her struggle to infuse the firm with new management has repeatedly faltered. It is not uncommon for a small business to struggle after the loss of a strong leader. A company's owners can protect it to some degree by writing succession plans and investing in ''key man'' life insurance policies. If the departed executive was a charismatic force, however, and his successor is perceived as a weak manager, the risk that the business will splinter increases. Remarkably, Tradeware has continued to flourish financially since the death of Mr. Smithers. Its revenue has doubled, its profit margins have expanded, and its work force has grown to 64 from 25. But the numbers tell only part of the story. Even as the company was growing, it was fraying at the seams. Within a day of the helicopter crash, Mrs. Smithers turned to her father, John Marino, an entrepreneur and a teacher of entrepreneurship at Boston College, for guidance. Except for answering occasional strategy questions over the years, he had been uninvolved with the company and had not realized it had grown into a respected player in the industry. Mr. Marino suggested that he become chairman of a newly created board that would consist of himself and Mrs. Smithers. His other daughter, Stacey Marino, a former financial analyst who had joined Tradeware in a sales position the year before, was appointed the company's first chief financial officer. Mrs. Smithers stepped up as a figurehead chief executive, but frantically searched for someone to take the day-to-day management reins. Not long after her husband's accident, she visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to meet some of the company's clients and reassure them that Tradeware would stay in business. ''I could tell she was very nervous,'' said Cody Callihan, who had worked most closely with Mr. Smithers at Tradeware. ''For the past eight years prior to that she met very few customers.'' Mrs. Smithers judged Mr. Callihan, then 28, to be leadership material and promoted him to president from sales representative. But his lack of management experience soon showed, she said, and within a month she demoted him to vice president. A few weeks later, Mrs. Smithers hired a friend of her husband as a consultant. But within days of the consultant's arrival, Mr. Marino said he told his daughter: ''Get rid of this guy right away. He's poison.'' Mrs. Smithers fired him. ''That was a nightmare,'' she said. Another management miscue followed. Ralph Smithers, Mrs. Smithers's father-in-law and an entrepreneur and former management consultant, had offered to help Mrs. Smithers keep the company going while she was in mourning. He became involved as a consultant a few weeks after the accident. He was a diplomat who looked and acted like his son, and much of the staff took to him, employees said. However, he and Mrs. Smithers soon ''started knocking heads,'' she said. ''It's a mistake I made,'' she said. ''I tried to bring in people who were close to me and Will and you can't do that.'' Unbeknownst to Ralph Smithers, he said, many business decisions were being made largely behind the scenes by Mr. Marino. Mr. Marino recruited someone he knew on the Boston College faculty to serve as a member of the board. He also suggested that his daughter bring in a business consultant whom he knew, which she did. And he introduced her to Clay Stobaugh, the son of one of Mr. Marino's business partners. After lunch with Mr. Stobaugh, Mrs. Smithers offered him the presidency of the company. Mr. Marino said the decision surprised him because he had had Mr. Stobaugh in mind to be vice president for marketing and sales. Ralph Smithers was also surprised to learn of the sudden appointment, and was subsequently pushed out of the company. ''I think it would have been confusing with Ralph here because people associated Ralph with Will,'' Mr. Marino said. Mrs. Smithers said she now realizes she sometimes acted too impulsively out of a desire to ''get things taken care of'' quickly. She also said she let her father fill the leadership void because she was uncomfortable with being in charge. Whatever the case, in the year or so after her father-in-law's departure, a majority of the employees resigned or were fired and replaced by outsiders. ''I felt strongly that anyone who was marginal'' would need to be replaced, Mr. Marino said. The rapid turnover apparently created a tumultuous work environment as surviving employees scrutinized the newcomers. ''Camps formed, and it was all-out war,'' said Alen Capalik, the former operations manager at Tradeware who resigned in June. ''With Will, that never would have happened.'' Mrs. Smithers acknowledges that the atmosphere was tense, but said, ''It was just growing pains.'' In the meantime, Mrs. Smithers and her father were having second thoughts about Mr. Stobaugh, their latest president, judging him to be unfamiliar with the business's technology and not assertive enough. In September, he left the company. In October, rather than search for another outsider to take over, Mrs. Smithers appointed her sister, Ms. Marino, as president. As chief financial officer, Ms. Marino had helped negotiate the acquisition of a company based in London this year; a private equity firm that invested $6 million in Tradeware in the summer approved of her promotion. Today only a handful of the company's 64 employees ever knew Will Smithers. ''This is never how it was supposed to be,'' Mrs. Smithers said. ''It was never supposed to be a family business. It was Will's and mine. Now it's me and my sister and my father.'' Mrs. Smithers said she was still struggling with the question of leadership. While she remains chief executive in name, she said she did not want to be the one who set strategy. ''I don't know anybody out there,'' she said. ''I want to be in my office creating software.'' © copyright 2004 The New York Times Company