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Zombies Ate My Business
How to Keep Your Traditional Business from Becoming One of the Undead
By JAMIE GERDSEN River Grove Books
Copyright © 2015 Jamie Gerdsen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63299-070-9
CHAPTER 1
I SEE ...
Perhaps you recall the scene in the movie The Sixth Sense, when 9-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) tells child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) his secret, in a whispery thin voice: "I see dead people ... walking around like regular people."
Well, I've been looking over your business and I want to tell you something: "I see zombies ... walking around like regular employees."
"Zombies?" you ask. "Come on, Jamie. Really?"
Yup. And you need to listen, or those zombies will eat up your business.
Gulp. Gulp. Gone.
Read on, and find out just how invasive those zombies have already become and how much they'll go on gulping until they devour your entire business.
Now the zombies I'm talking about don't look like the ones you see on the hit TV show The Walking Dead or in the movie World War Z. They don't have hideously disfigured faces, blood dripping down on torn shreds of clothing; they don't emit a rotting-corpse smell. If they did, they'd be easy to spot and super easy to eliminate from your business.
Oh, no. These zombies are much more difficult to identify. They're hidden in plain sight, moving around the office or job site, seemingly doing their jobs and responding to other workers. But they're in a decidedly indifferent state. Call it a self-induced hypnosis or even sleepwalking through the business day. Whatever it is, these individuals are not invested in moving your business forward. In fact, they're not interested in your business. Period. They're interested in one thing and one thing only — collecting a paycheck for doing the absolute minimum amount of work. And don't make the mistake of thinking this applies only to the lowly serfs in the trenches. Zombies have been known to walk the management halls, too.
No matter where zombies exist in your organization, their indifference is infectious. They cause other people to disengage. Very quickly, they create a lethargic, indifferent work force. Think of it as the first course in a zombie meal.
What's the next course? you ask. Human flesh? Or perhaps that zombie favorite, human brains?
No, I'm afraid it's much, much worse.
They're going to eat your money.
CHAPTER 2
BECOMING A ZOMBIE HUNTER
Bet you never thought "zombie hunter" would be one of your most important executive tasks. Get used to it; we are living in a strange new world.
The old days, when workers showed up on time and gave everything they had, have now gone the way of Nehru jackets and parachute pants. Having a strong work ethic means different things to different people. For me, a strong work ethic is nothing short of giving a job your all — or as an athlete might say: "leaving it all on the field."
But for too many employees, it means simply showing up for work, socializing over coffee, and then settling in to the important stuff: Facebook, Twitter feeds, YouTube. Whew! I'm ready to go home already.
Yes, I'm being harsh. Everyone wants to work in an office environment where the individual isn't a slave to the job and has plenty of freedom to interact with the world outside the office. I get that. I even agree with it.
But the issue is productivity.
While the new, more enlightened work environment was designed to make employees happier and more productive, it has also become an ideal hiding place for zombies.
They blend in.
That's why your job — as zombie hunter — is to identify them and weed them out. Cull the nonproductive ones from the herd. Each person who isn't being productive is sucking the life out of your business. The more zombies you have, the more dead weight your business is forced to carry.
Most traditional businesses — others, too, for that matter — can't afford to lug around this dead weight. But let's stick with traditional businesses, for a moment, since that's my passion.
I define traditional businesses as mainstay businesses: dry cleaners, auto parts supply stores, gas stations, HVAC companies, plumbers, and electricians. Even some manufacturing facilities fall into the traditional business category.
You know these companies. They live where you live.
It's the plumber two streets over who hung out his shingle in 1953; the dry cleaner down the block that now has second-generation ownership; the manufacturer near the highway exit, that has had a steady work force of fifty-five employees for three decades.
Traditional businesses have stood the test of time, been bastions of the community, and are — in most cases — doing business in the same way they always have. You see, for most traditional businesses, each year is pretty much a repeat of the previous year.
What do I mean by that?
Let's use my business, Apollo, as an example.
The company started in 1910 — long before I was even born. For sixty years, it was a single-service company — heating. When air conditioning came on the scene in the 1950s, Apollo added air conditioning installation and service. But since heating and air conditioning go hand in hand, for all intents and purposes, Apollo Heating & Cooling was still a single-service company. The business model didn't change. It was still technicians doing installation and servicing for customers in the same way they always had.
The key word here is "same."
Year in and year out, the employees at Apollo were the same: the services we offered were the same, the products we installed were the same, and we worked for the same customers.
With so much sameness, you can see how it's easy to get lulled into a comforting routine. Before you know it, your whole business is, well, kinda zombie-like.
Just like that, you and your company resemble the walking dead. And this can lead to three very bad outcomes:
1. That comfortable routine of sameness is like heroin. Suddenly, it's all you want. When this happens, you ignore problems, you Band-Aid problems instead of fixing them. You begin managing the business differently. Instead of making decisions based on who or what needs to be done to grow, you base them on what will cause you the least disruption.
2. Undead companies are sleepwalkers. Sure, they're still running service calls. Making products. Hiring and firing. Filing taxes. But make no mistake — they're doing it in a trance. These companies have lost the drive that fosters growth. They're just cruising along. In effect, they've "plateaued," which is deadly dangerous. It doesn't take much to nudge a plateaued business into decline and death.
3. Undead businesses are zombie magnets. Zombie employees swarm to them. Why? Pretty simple: they love the sameness. It's a great environment to settle in and do as little as possible. The more zombies your undead business attracts, the more dead weight it has to carry, and the faster it's going to go into decline.
Your job as owner/CEO/CZH (chief zombie hunter) is to prevent your business from joining the ranks of the undead. Throughout this book there are tools that will help you reenergize your business — propelling growth, and making it a zombie-free zone.
It takes smart mojo to make that happen. But I'm going to teach you the secrets.
Exercises:
[check] Zombies are employees who have emotionally disengaged from your business. Because they've disengaged, they're no longer helping your business grow. As you look at your employees, do you see obvious zombies among them?
[check] Do you have zombies in your management ranks? These are often people who like to tell others what to do but seldom do any actual work themselves. Make a list of those who exhibit zombie-like behavior.
[check] Take your list of potential zombies and identify those people you wish to save. Understand that this is an emotional and time-intensive process. Often, management zombies have institutional memory, which makes them extremely valuable to the organization. Bringing those individuals back can often reenergize an organization.
[check] Finally, are you — that's right, you — exhibiting any zombie-like behavior? Has it all gotten to be routine? Have you, as CEO/owner, grown too comfortable in that corner office?
* * *
As we continue, we'll talk about what you can do to reengage emotionally to make your business grow and become more profitable.
CHAPTER 3
ZOMBIE BITES
Here's one of those "Oh, crap" moments.
I wanted to give you instances of how zombies feed on your business, but I didn't want these stories to cause problems for those who might recognize themselves in my examples.
So I'm approaching this the way movies do when they say "based on a true story." The key word is "based." It allows film-makers to add a 100 mph car chase, blow up three buildings, and have the hero save all the children at a local preschool.
Gotta love the movies.
TECH INFECTION
A traditional business that specialized in carpet cleaning added a new tech. They were pleased with the hire because Dan had worked for another carpet cleaner and brought experience with him. Just to be sure, the company paired him with Jason, one of their more experienced techs, and Jason confirmed Dan knew his stuff.
For the first six months, Dan was a model employee. But then, he seemed to slow down. When supervisors questioned why his jobs always seemed to be running long, he shrugged it off, blaming faulty equipment, health issues, scheduling mix-ups — a whole litany of woes.
But the truth was, Dan — knowing his probationary period was over — was slowing down to his usual speed. If the rest of the techs in the company were working at 60 mph, Dan was doing 35.
He was also telling any techs who'd listen that they didn't need to hustle to finish their jobs. "Why bust your chops for them?" he'd say. "The company has plenty of money and besides, when you take longer, customers feel they're getting more for their money."
Guess what?
Other techs started working slower, too. It was a full quarter later before management realized the effect Dan had had on productivity. If, in round numbers, the company normally grossed $650,000 a quarter, that quarter they grossed $550,000.
Word had gotten out about Dan's zombie-like work speed and he was put on a performance improvement plan (PIP). At the end of the PIP, he was let go. But the damage had been done. The next quarter's gross was better, at $575,000. But the company was now down $75,000 for the year.
Even worse, to get the rest of the techs back operating at normal speed, the company had to put on an incentive — which was an additional expense.
FATAL FINALE
A decade ago, Dave, the CEO of a traditional business with seventy-five employees, changed his company from a sole proprietorship to an employee-owned business. At the time, he told his employees his exit strategy was to sell them the company. More than thirty employees bought shares. Four key VPs purchased sizable stakes, each believing that he or she might become the next CEO.
In fact, each of these VPs continued to buy stock, thinking (well ... Dave might have intimated) that whoever owned the most stock might have a leg up on becoming CEO.
Dave, however, never put a succession plan in place. He liked the competition in acquiring shares and he knew if he tapped one of them, the other three might leave.
So as he came closer to retirement, he kept dangling the CEO carrot, all the while pulling as much money out of the company as possible. In his final years, he spent much of his time at his fishing cabin in Canada.
The day he retired, he gathered the four VPs together in his office overlooking the shop floor, looked each of them in the eye and said: "I don't know which of you will be best to run the company so I'm going to let you decide that among yourselves."
All four wanted it. None of them were willing to concede. The impasse continued for three weeks, during which time none of the company's employees knew who was running the place and little work was accomplished.
The VPs finally settled it at an off-site slugfest by voting their shares. The VP who owned the most shares teamed with the VP who owned the least — electing themselves, respectively, CEO and president.
One of the VPs quit on the spot. And her shares then had to be repurchased by the company.
The remaining VP stayed and sabotaged anything and everything he could, which was especially hurtful because the company was so weak.
The new CEO quickly discovered his predecessor had stripped the company bare — of a substantial amount of working capital.
Seven months later, after three rounds of layoffs, the company closed its doors.
This happens all too often when the head guy goes zombie and becomes psychotically greedy.
MY SON, THE ZOMBIE
Steve built a thriving service business. Much of the company's success was pure Steve. He was a handsome guy, always ready with a smile and an encouraging word. But he was more than just a nurturing boss; he made smart decisions and viewed running his business as a marathon, not a sprint.
People liked working for Steve. And because they liked him, they were emotionally invested in the company and worked hard. In fact, Steve's company became one of those rare companies where people in his business all wanted to work.
That all changed when Steve Jr. joined the company as EVP — executive vice president.
Steve Jr. had inherited his dad's good looks and charm but not his work ethic. Even in high school he told friends: "I don't have to study, I'm going to inherit my dad's company and I'll be set for life." After Steve Jr. failed out of his third college, his dad brought him into the company and put him in charge of corporate accounts.
It took almost a year before corporate accounts began to atrophy. A loss here. A loss there. Of course, Steve never saw it as Junior's fault. Instead, two years later — with corporate accounts still declining — Dad named him EVP of Sales and Marketing.
For the first time Junior found something he enjoyed — being wined and dined by the company's advertising agency and various media outlets. During an agency marketing presentation, Steve Jr. had an idea.
A wonderful, terrible idea.
An idea that would show his dad how smart he was. And, even better, he wouldn't have to lift a finger.
He'd fire the ad agency, save the company all the money it was paying them, get out of all that costly media, and go into freestanding inserts (commonly known as FSIs). The beauty of FSIs was that they would do the creative work for free; and because they dealt in coupons, they could provide Junior with a black-and-white, quantifiable, provable record of marketing spend and sales.
He enthusiastically pitched it to his dad, who was skeptical, but figured it couldn't hurt the company too much.
So the agency was let go and Steve Jr. — not wanting to get his hands dirty doing the hard work of figuring out a profitable ad campaign — instructed the FSI publisher to think up a really good promotion. (And, of course, to continue wining and dining him.) They presented their idea — a 15 percent discount on a service call — over a filet mignon dinner paired with a vintage red wine. It might have been the wine talking, but Junior thought it was the best idea he'd ever heard. He didn't even bother running it past his dad.
An FSI with 15 percent off coupon was created and ran in the FSI pubs. Redemption was almost immediate. People started using those coupons.
Junior was thrilled.
But the CFO was livid.
That 15 percent discount took out most of the company's profit. Worse, before they could get out of all their FSI contracts, they were actually training consumers not to use their service unless they got a discount.
The company took a 9 percent hit in their profits that first year. Without the exposure of mass-media marketing, the company's profits declined 21 percent in year two.
Most employees who'd thought Steve Jr. was just lazy now realized that was not the case.
He was lazy and not very smart.
Of course his dad had no choice but to stick up for him. This, in turn, began to polarize the company.
Today, Steve Jr. is still EVP, but he has no real authority. And hey, that's fine by him. Zombies love a fat paycheck for just sitting around and looking important.
ZOMBIE DAYS OFF
A traditional business hired a young woman, Meagan, as a dispatcher. She was personable, had good references, and seemed to have a knack for juggling service teams. For this traditionally male company, Meagan was something different — a walk on the wild side.
She had been with the company for just over two years when she took her first sick day. It was a Friday. She called in that morning and said she was too sick to come in. And then on Monday, just three days later, she showed up looking fit as a fiddle.
Friday rolled around and she called in sick again. Monday she was fine.
She missed four Fridays in a row before her supervisor called her into his office and nicely asked her what was going on.
Meagan broke down in tears and said she was seeing a psychiatrist on Fridays because of workplace issues.
The supervisor was stunned. Workplace issues? Psychiatrist? He tried to get her to tell him more, but all he got was a torrent of tears. A little worried about a lawsuit, he told her about a resource that could help her manage the situation and even helped set up times for her to meet with professionals trained to sort out concerns such as Meagan's. He then worked with the staff to identify how they could improve the work environment, and he followed through on their suggestions. Even Meagan told him she was pleased with the changes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Zombies Ate My Business by JAMIE GERDSEN. Copyright © 2015 Jamie Gerdsen. Excerpted by permission of River Grove Books.
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