The Daily Recruiter

by Rick Houcek

Two big news items emerged from my fair city in the last 48 hours. Both have dramatic implications and lessons for leaders everywhere.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has announced a $140 million budget shortfall, resulting in expense cuts that include the termination of about 440 government jobs. The first wave of dismissals was announced yesterday; the second wave comes later today.

And Atlanta-based Home Depot has announced 15 store closings nationwide, due to lagging performance. 1300 jobs will be lost. It’s the first time the retailer has ever closed even one flagship store, let alone 15.

Layoffs and store closings are nothing new in business. Been happening forever.

Nor are the backlash and criticism leaders get when they occur.

It’s understandable. Heck, if you’re an employee facing a layoff, it would be human nature for you to throw accusations of “mismanagement” at those in senior positions — primarily at the top dog.

And at times, it’s dead-on accurate.

Take Enron. When that story broke, and news crews started interviewing employees for their reaction, turns out they were all justified and bulls-eye accurate in their mistrust of — and flame-throwing at — Lay and Skilling and Fastow and all the others. What was being done at the top was not only gross mismanagement, but also unethical and highly illegal. And those disgraced leaders are getting what’s coming to them. Convicted founder Ken Lay’s woes ended when he died of a heart attack before sentencing.

On local news in the last 24 hours, I’ve seen several city employees interviewed. They were angry, bitter, and scared about the impending layoffs. And of course, they blamed the mayor and other top officials. “Who’s in charge of the budget? How’d this happen? Where’s the accountability.”

These are fair questions. And I’ve always said, at the end of the day, it’s the leader who is accountable for all that takes place under him — whether he/she ordered it, allowed it, or had no idea it was even happening. The buck stops with the leader.

This, in part, is why leadership is not for everyone. Few have the guts and iron will to handle this heat, this criticism, these searing cuts, jabs and thrusts that must be endured. And when it’s the leader’s fault, there truly must be accountability.

BUT … and it’s a big but … it’s seldom so neat, so clean, and so crystal clear to decipher.

The reality is … it’s a double-edge sword .

There’s a flip side to layoffs and store closings and other business downturns … that sometimes is NOT the leader’s fault. Sometimes these events are caused by a collection of occurrences that did not include any wrongdoing, mismanagement, blindness, or stupidity on the leader’s part.

Followers — and the media — don’t want to hear this. They want a carcass to barbecue. Only someone who has walked in the moccasins of he or she at the summit can truly grasp what I’m about to say.

Every day, the leader must make difficult and controversial choices that impact the lives of all constituents — with limited market information, incomplete financial data, and partial competitive intelligence. At best . And what the leader DOES know is all swirling and gyrating and changing every second of every day. It’s dynamic, never static.

In other words, everything about a leader’s day is a moving target. Like a rushing river through a mountain gap, no single drop of water is ever stationary for more than an instant.

Or like a football quarterback who must throw the ball with concentrated, dead-on accuracy to an accelerating receiver … ahead of him … so both ball and receiver arrive at a distant point at the same future moment. All the while, chaos ensues around the quarterback as 300-pound gorillas only inches away are groping and clawing their way to crush him.

A leader must make decisions in that turbulent environment. Every day.

But there’s more. Leaders must fully grasp these dizzying, unpleasant realities about their followers:

• They don’t understand the tornado-like conditions of your world.
• They don’t know what you do know, nor what you don’t know.
• They don’t have the data at their fingertips you have at yours.
• They’re more inclined to make me-based decisions, while you must make we-based decisions.
• They think you have ALL the information you need all the time, so how can you possibly make such dumb choices?
• They think your every decision — right or wrong — was made with them personally in mind. So when you’re right, they think that’s what you should have done. And when you’re wrong, they wonder why you would single them out and create such hellish pain.
• They will criticize your decisions that don’t pan out.
• They will only occasionally — but frankly seldom — give you the benefit of the doubt when outcomes don’t match expectations.
• They will only occasionally accept personal responsibility for poor company performance. It’s too easy to blame you — everybody else is.
• And they will never tell you any of the above. They think it to themselves and will talk about it to each other, but they won’t tell you .

Oh, and one more. This one really chaps my derriere. Many followers (not all, but many) have an entitlement attitude that goes like this: You owe me a job, you owe me a raise, and you owe me guaranteed lifetime employment. So even the hint of layoffs will detonate my fury. At YOU. Couldn’t have been anything I did.

It’s next to impossible to get a legion of employees to understand that layoffs or store closings or other business catastrophes — that could cost them their jobs — MAY not have been your fault. MAY have been unavoidable. MAY actually be in the best interest of customers and the company. And MAY save thousands of other employees from losing their jobs. You’ll play hell trying to sell any of those.

Lessons & Actions For You :
So what can you do? Here are a few important leadership actions for both prevention of horrific outcomes, and what to do after the fact. First, prevention.

1. Invite people into the strategic decision-making process up-front. Bring in your best brains. Get many viewpoints. You’ll see a wider landscape and make smarter decisions. People feel honored when their wisdom is sought. And to be fair, they must take partial ownership later if things go awry.
2. Tell everyone, repeatedly, the realities of effective decision-making. Tell them “A real-life component of success in making a decision … is incomplete data. That’s always been true, and will always be. Of course, that creates risk, and risk means we won’t always win. Expertise comes at a price. Sometimes that price is failure. But this much is for sure, if we wait for all the information to come to us before acting, we’ll never act. And we’ll be dead before we know what hit us.” This must be communicated repeatedly. Once is never enough. (Sidebar: Don’t misinterpret this as having a losing attitude. It’s not — it’s very different.)
3. Share ongoing results and don’t harbor bad news. In a sporting event, if one team is behind by a wide margin late in the game, does anyone NOT know it? Heck no — the players know, the fans in the stadium know, and those watching at home on TV know. The scoreboard tells all . Do you have a scoreboard that shows the state of the game at any moment? Do you share only the good news? Tragic leader mistake. People can’t help fix what they don’t know is broken. Nor can you fairly expect them to take responsibility for it.
4. Hold regularly-scheduled leadership team meetings. No less than monthly. I’m shocked at how many companies I’m engaged to work with for strategic planning that, before I got involved, had no regular, ongoing top-level meetings of this nature. Key players operated in the dark, out of the loop, with no common decision-making criteria.

And after problems arise, bad news surfaces, or performance nosedives, here are some fix-it actions…..

1. Invite people into the problem-solving process. Let them help. You can’t fix everything yourself, nor should you. Remember “Apollo 13”, when the team of engineers had to fix that lack-of-oxygen problem, fast? A perfect example of how a team can respond with time short, resources limited, and lives on the line — when they are engaged, involved, and committed.
2. Delegate both responsibility and authority. A great de -motivator is to delegate only responsibility to fix what’s broken, but no authority to make critical decisions in so doing.
3. Don’t rush to punishment for failure. Taking risks means there will be failures. Failure is an essential part of learning. Just don’t let them quit. Failure generates valuable new data — use it for next attempts. Only punish repeated failure for doing the same thing over and over, not learning from past tries, and expecting a different result.

Layoffs are gut-wrenching, no doubt about it. I have compassion for those affected. But I also abhor when those impacted “play the victim”. Jobs are not guaranteed. And every individual has an obligation to self, to family, to those under his/her care, to create the “ultimate personal freedom”, which is the peace of mind in knowing that through my own non-stop self-learning, self-growing and self-development, I am relevant, valuable, and marketable at all times … so if I lose my job for any reason, I will survive and thrive .

Some have that attitude, but sadly, too few. The ones who don’t will never become high-achieving, responsible leaders.

One thing is for sure. Business — like all of life — is cyclical. It’s a series of ups and downs. Your job is to vault the “ups” as high as possible, and to extend their length. And to minimize the time and impact of the inevitable “downs”.

And your truest tests of leadership will come in how brilliantly you do that.

Rick Houcek facilitates off-site strategic planning retreats, helping CEOs and Leadership Teams create high-impact plans that overcome the crippling effects of lousy execution (the single biggest cause of plan failure) — and get successfully implemented! His dynamic Power Planning^TM strategic process drives action through his Escape-Proof Accountability^TM system. It’s ideal for small and mid-size businesses. To bring this potent weapon to your team, contact Rick by phone, fax or email. Visit his web site at www.SoarWithEagles.com. And ask about his 100% No-Risk Guarantee.

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