Georgia-Pacific Chief Reveres Its Ex-CEO but Points to Differences : Managers: A. D. (Pete) Correll faces challenges in taking over the company from T. Marshall Hahn Jr.

A.D. (Pete) Correll spares no superlatives when talking about the man who preceded him as chief executive officer of Georgia-Pacific Corp.

Nevertheless, Correll has gone to lengths to demonstrate he’s quite different from T. Marshall Hahn Jr., who retired as CEO last spring after leading the wood products company through 10 years of extensive growth.

If a local magazine cover picturing Correll, 52, astride his big Harley-Davidson motorcycle didn’t fully drive home the point, the executive has underscored it by donning hard hat and blue jeans to visit G-P mills and engage in no-holds-barred question-and-answer sessions with plant workers.

The image is at odds with that of Hahn, a former university professor and administrator who personified the classic picture of a button-down executive.

“I have worked shift work,” Correll said in a recent interview at Georgia-Pacific’s pink-granite headquarters tower in downtown Atlanta. “I have run just about every type of facility this company has. I have been in this business my whole life, so I think that I have a unique understanding of the industry at an operating, personal, hands-on level.

“Hence, I believe very strongly in the people side of the business and probably put more emphasis on that, simply because that’s the way I came up.”

Correll is unabashed in his praise of Hahn, whom he considers a mentor. Hahn continues as Georgia-Pacific’s chairman of the board until this month, when Correll will succeed him in that post too, and is a frequent recipient of telephone calls from the new CEO.

“Maybe I’ve called him more than he expected, but not more than I expected,” Correll said. “I’d have to be a fool not to use Marshall Hahn as a resource.”

Though emphasizing his regular-guy leanings, Correll’s tasks at Georgia-Pacific call for more than being able to banter with shift workers.

Though the company’s building products business is soaring at record levels, the pulp and paper divisions continue to suffer in a prolonged industrywide slump that was reflected in G-P’s $36-million third-quarter loss.

Georgia-Pacific also continues to grapple with paring the immense debt it incurred with the 1990 acquisition of Great Northern Nekoosa Corp., its giant papermaking rival, for $3.8 billion.

And the company, like all others in the industry, has been under increased pressure to improve its environmental record.

Correll is up to the challenge, said analyst Gary Palmero, who follows the paper and forest products industries for Oppenheimer & Co.

“Marshall Hahn had a reputation of being very hard-nosed and efficiency driven. It was a severe style--not that he is not a good person, but that was just his public style,” Palmero said.

“He (Correll) wants a more humanistic image,” he said. “But an image of a person sometimes is unrelated to how you run a company. Some of the most genial people can be hard nosed when it comes to dollars and cents.”

Though Hahn got most of the media attention for directing the big Nekoosa deal, he relied heavily on Correll’s paper industry expertise, Palmero said.

Correll said he is not interested in being viewed merely as a nice guy.

“I have been pushing this company toward a more participative, involved management system,” he said. “The reason we are doing all this is because we believe it will improve performance, improve earnings and increase shareholder value . . . not simply so people will feel good.”

Correll, who was born in the Georgia coastal city of Brunswick, got his first taste of the business world at the age of 12, when his father died and he went to work at the family men’s clothing store.

“I got in business very early in life, with my mother, and learned what a dollar was worth and how you had to make one and the pressure of business,” Correll said.

“I never have lost track of the fact that business exists to make money,” he said. “And I’ve always tried to explain to anybody that worked for me or with me that making money was not bad, that this whole free enterprise system depends on somebody making money and giving it back to the people who own the place.”

After receiving business and engineering degrees from the University of Georgia and the University of Maine, Correll worked as an engineer and instructor, then got a job with Mead Corp. in 1980, rising to senior vice president before joining Georgia-Pacific in 1988.

He was serving as president of the company when he was tapped to become CEO and chairman this year.