The Olympic fire drill.

• Author: Sganga, John B.
• Position: Patrick C. Glisson, chief financial officer of the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games - Executive to Executive - Interview

It takes a financial executive confident in his resume to accept a job that promises to span no more than six years. That's what Patrick C. Glisson did when he signed on as CFO of the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games.

In his earlier position as CFO for the city of Atlanta, Glisson was instrumental in putting together Atlanta's bid package for the Games. After a short stint in the private sector with KPMG Peat Marwick, he opted to join what was quickly becoming an Olympic whirlwind.

His first priority? Get his hands around a $1.58-billion breakeven budget (since upgraded to $1.7 billion). The assignment has been a rocky one, indeed, but Glisson has learned how to survive by "staying focused and having a high tolerance for ambiguity," he says. "When I first got to know the COO, who's my immediate boss here, we both concluded that this was a fire drill of major proportion. If we couldn't handle situations that change very rapidly, we were in the wrong place."

CFO Glisson definitely is in the right place. And he shares his gold-medal tales here with John B. Sganga, CFO of Consolidated Furniture.

SGANGA: What's the management organization of the Atlanta Committee? To whom do you report, and who are your peers?

GLISSON: I report directly to the COO, as do all of the core activities involved in actually delivering the Games. He reports to our president and CEO, who came up with the bold idea of bringing the Games to Atlanta and then sold the idea to the International Olympic Committee. Reporting directly to the CEO are the external-relations activities and functions like communications, Olympic programs, legacy projects, marketing and corporate services.

My organization is called financial and management services, and my peers are in construction, Games services, operations, technology, venue management, sports, administration, international relations and our Olympic broadcasting activity.

SGANGA: Who reports to you, and what functions are you responsible for?

GLISSON: The core operation of finance - including budgeting, financial planning and analysis; accounting, procurement, contract administration and risk management - reports to me. We serve as the eyes and ears of management and until recently formed the center of the corporate planning function. Until late 1992, I also oversaw human resources and administration.

SGANGA: I understand your finance staffing varies, with a permanent staff, volunteers, temporary, part-time and local staffing. How does that break down?

GLISSON: Most everyone currently on board - just over a hundred people - is part of permanent staffing. We also have some contractors who offer brokerage support for risk management as well as occasional volunteers.

The tally is a little more complex corporatewide because we employ value-in-kind, or VIK, personnel from our sponsors. That presents a particularly difficult management problem from a financial perspective. In general, value-in-kind donations replace cash and can be such items as people, airline tickets, computers and telephones from our sponsors.

SGANGA: We understand more than 71,000 people are involved in the Olympics. Can you tell us about the typical payroll now and during peak staffing periods?

GLISSON: Let me answer that in numbers of people. By the end of 1995, we had a total staff of 3,300 people, including those who are salaried, hourly, from sponsors, loaned executives, VIK, contractors and volunteers. However, we're beginning to ramp up significantly and at the apex - that is, the delivery of the Games - we could have as many as 80,000 people. Then we'll quickly demobilize that force.

But most of the people hired for the peak time are contractors and volunteers. We have fewer than 1,500 salaried, full-time people.

SGANGA: Do you offer employee benefits to the 1,500 people? And, if so, what's the typical plan like, and what percentage of salary is it?

GLISSON: We do now offer benefits. But when I walked in the door, I didn't even have a secretary, much less a benefit plan. So we created one from scratch.

Early on, we agreed to simply provide a supplement to the Cobra plans. Once we were up and running, our objective was to have a plan comparable to those in most of the businesses in Atlanta, without any retirement plan. So now we have a health plan, with the employee and the company sharing the cost; an optional dental plan; and a basic life-insurance plan.

We have a 403(b), which is the nonprofit version of a deferred compensation plan, funded through employee contributions. So an employee can put away tax-exempt money. And, of course, we have holiday and vacation schedules similar to those a large company would offer.

SGANGA: Do volunteers play a major role in the finance organization?

GLISSON: We use volunteers now where they make sense and particularly for delivering the Games. I'll use volunteers extensively in my department during that time because we'll have a much expanded financial operation. In fact, we'll have a financial service officer at each venue, or sporting area, and we'll have risk-management people available for loss control and claims management. Most of the latter workers will come from our broker or insurer. And, although they're really contractors, you can consider them volunteers.

We'll also use another 100 or so people from our CPA finns to supplement the staff in the field at Games time. And we have a relationship with the Institute of Internal Auditors in which some of their members work for us on a...