Difficult decisions: Letting go of executives and managers that can't do the job

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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Difficult decisions: Letting go of executives and managers that can’t do the job.

 

The great football coach and motivational speaker Vince Lombardi said:

“If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm”.

 

That my friends should be a mantra in every organization. Every job, whether you deal with the public or you are hidden in a corner office needs enthusiasm to perform at the level needed today to be successful.

 

Vince was right. In today’s world with the amount of competition and much more sophisticated clients, companies need people that love their jobs, that feel passion for what they are doing, and that demonstrate great enthusiasm and a positive attitude when they are at work.

 

A man named Bill Zollars, who used to work for Ryder Trucks in Miami, Florida and left that company to become CEO of Yellow Corporation at a time when that company was on the verge of bankruptcy, had to face the Board of Directors on his first day on the job.

 

The first question they asked of him was: “What do you think this company needs more than anything else?”

 

Do you know what he answered?  His answer will shock most of you as it did me:

“Public Hangings!”

 

Recalling the moment in an interview with Jason Jennings, Zollars said that he perceived panic in the room and a collective gasp. Everybody in the room probably had at that moment, one question in their minds, “Who have we hired to lead this company?”

 

Well, as it turned out, they had hired the right executive to head the company. Taking a company that was very close to closing its doors and letting go of thousands of employees, in a few years he achieved dramatic results in all measures of productivity in the freight business including: Customer satisfaction which was at a very low level, on time service,  dock bills per hour, and tons per tractor per year.  Today, Yellow is close to reaching $4 billion dollars a year with much higher annual revenue than most companies in that industry.

 

Zollars management theory, very important to understand in today’s business climate, is that a new CEO or President or even a manager in a department, committed to improving a business needs to send a loud signal to everyone in the organization that things will never be as they were and that they will change fast.

 

His vivid “public hangings” metaphor definitely conveyed that message I would say in a very clear manner. Bill Zollars believes that since people are such an important part of the equation for a company to be successful, you must keep the executives that will help the company achieve its goals and the people who don’t fit into your new paradigm move them out of the company as soon as possible, meaning very fast.

 

It has been said that Lee Iacocca who used to head Chrysler Corporation during very challenging times and who was very successful in turning it around, had a sign behind his desk that read: THE FLOGGINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.

 

It was probably a joke but that is what he believed in, very much like Mr. Zollars.

 

What he was trying to communicate is that you better get with the program or you are out.

 

Business leaders have no control over weather, natural disasters, the economy, interest rates or what competitors do; yet thinking or worrying about these issues often takes up much of their day.

 

What a leader can control is who joins or leaves the team and how to develop and train those on board.

Unfortunately, most leaders make poor use of this freedom. To fix, build, or take an organization to a higher level, a leader must exercise one of leaderships greatest privileges proactive and aggressively, deciding whom to keep and whom to fire.

 

We all know that our culture in Puerto Rico and other Hispanic countries with the “hay bendito” makes it extremely difficult to do this but if you look at it from a different point of view, you will soon realize that if you keep someone that doesn’t have the talent or the motivation to hold a specific job, you are not doing that person a favor.

 

 There is a reason that he or she is not performing and it could very well be that the person is not pursuing his or her passion and sooner or later it will catch up and it is much better to find out sooner than later. Everyone should have fun and make money doing what they love to do. Spending eight hours a day, one third of your life stuck in a job you don’t enjoy doing is a tragedy.

 

We must face the fact that in Puerto Rico with expensive labor and high wages, there is a need for effective executives and committed employees that will lead a team to high levels of productivity. Those executives or employees that can’t do that should not be working in the organization.

 

 Otherwise we have no chance competing against countries with much lower wages than us.    

 

If you are in a situation in which you must make a company more productive, besides hiring capable consultants (there aren’t many), you must ask yourself a few key questions:

What do I really want for the future of this company and what strategy will I implement to make it happen?

 

Do I have the right people to implement the new strategy?

 

Do I have the resources needed to accomplish our goals and objectives?

 

What processes will need to be put in place to turn out a quality product or service?

 

Will I have measurement systems to track our progress?

 

Yes, there are other important questions but these are enough to steer you in the right track.