The company for which I was hired to be CEO played an important role in the advertising industry, so I was surprised when I actually arrived and learned how lean the staff really was. In my first week the office manager was diagnosed with an advanced cancer and went out on sick leave, never to return. Adding insult to injury the head of sales quit during my second week. We had no head of sales, no strategic plan and no marketing department, let alone any bench strength. If someone came down with a bad cold an entire area could grind to a halt. I still didn’t know where to find the pencils. But I knew that there many things that needed to change.
As I was learning the needs of the business I quickly saw that there was much to be done and no money to hire more staff. Until we started focusing on growth and new business lines, we had to make do with the staff we had. I combed through the personnel files and gathered everyone’s resume together and looked for unsung skills and talents. I found many. But one woman stood out, with an MBA in Marketing from a top business school. Yet her job was small and she had been there for a while.
I called her into my office. “Dee (the names have been changed to protect the innocent), tell me about your job here.” She started telling me how long she had been there and how loyal she was, how she knew more about our products and services than anyone else, how unappreciated she was, how underpaid and underused she was.
I saw my opening. “I have an opportunity for you. I see that you have a marketing background. I think this organization needs to think about marketing in a very different way than we’ve been thinking about it. I’d like you to take that on. Right now I can’t add to staff so I need you to do your current job too but I’m giving you the opportunity to become the Marketing Director of this company. I will be able to add to staff soon. I’m new and the Head Office needs to get to trust my judgment and recommendations. By the next quarter I’d like to go to them with both a strategic and marketing plan. We will work closely together. It might mean some longer hours than you’re putting in now but I think it will pay off. How does that sound to you?”
“I don’t understand what you need.”
“I need you to use your marketing background and talk to me about what you think we need to do to build our client base by positioning the company more broadly than it’s currently positioned. Where are the opportunities? How do we sell ourselves to those additional clients? How might we reach them?”
“If I still have to do my day job, when am I going to do this?”
“ I am suggesting that we do a first draft of this by the beginning of the next quarter. If I can’t convince the Head Office to fund a Marketing Director position with the work I’m suggesting you and I are both doing, then we’ll have to regroup. But this means about 9 weeks of extra work, probably a few hours at night and probably a few weekends.”
“Will I get paid extra for this?”
“I am hoping I’ll be able to promote you,” I replied, but her line of questioning was already telling me that I had made a mistake.
“Let me think about it.”
She never got back to me. She continued to come into the office at 8:45 a.m. and leave the office at 4:55 p.m., justifying leaving early because she came in early. She did her assigned work on time, accurately and responded to clients in a timely and professional manner. She remembered co-workers birthdays and anniversaries. She complained to her colleagues that she was underappreciated, undervalued and underpaid. She pouted at a mere hint of perceived injustice.
It was one of my first failings in that job. I never figured out how to motivate or inspire her fire. I gave her other opportunities and other assignments. Nothing seemed to work. And back then I was not brave enough to fire her. I worried about covering all the parts of her job that she did do.
Our workforce is different today. Even people who have been at a single company for a while have experienced economic downturns and they understand that the only constant in today’s business world is change. Constant change makes an executive’s role more difficult:
- We have to convince our staff that we understand the dynamics of the marketplace and that we are changing to get ahead of the curve.
- We have to listen to each and every concern about change. We have to address those concerns and not dismiss them out of hand.
- We have to really think through how the corporate culture needs to change and develop a plan to change that culture.
- A broad exodus of staff is usually bad thing; we can’t lie to ourselves and say, “They were not on board anyway.”
- If good people are starting to leave, you’re not doing it right. Stop. Listen better.
I have been on both sides of broad organizational change. It’s hard. Done right, the organization comes through it with a new vitality.
Please share what would be a good way to inspire people. To me it sounds like that person really didn’t want to change – she liked being the victim and complaining OR she was plain scared out of her wits. She didn’t even have the courage or respect to tell you no. I think your offer was pretty good considering the circumstances.
I have received many private comments about this posting. I will do a follow-up in the near future.