Shrinking the Camel

A friend of mine owns a company, and his employees get a little on edge when they see him coming their way.

It’s not that they don’t like him – he just has this tendency of asking a lot of questions – and his questions usually make people a little uncomfortable.

He’s never satisfied. Suppose you are feeling pretty good because the customer satisfaction reports have ticked up another notch. He’ll come up with some brilliant idea that the customer hadn’t even asked for yet, and ask why they aren’t even higher. Or, when the sales team gets all excited about a new lead for business, he’ll jump ten steps ahead of them and point out all of the issues that still must be resolved in order to win the deal. Get cracking on it.

The minute anyone – anyone! – starts to relax and feel a little comfortable with the way things are, he’ll quickly remind them of how far they have yet to go.

“We’ve got to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” is what he keeps telling his people over and over again. “If anyone thinks they can work here and keep the status quo, then they are at the wrong company, and are probably in the wrong life.”

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We have a saying here at my company: we like to see managers get “bloodied up a bit” before moving them into more prominent leadership roles. If we believe someone has management potential, we will intentionally put them in a situation where they will encounter extreme conflict, opposition, or just plain ambiguity (which in and of itself can be very stressful). Then we will watch closely to see how the manager candidate responds. How will they handle an impossible situation where there is no right or wrong answer, but a decision has to be made? How will they manage conflict and difficult personalities?  How will they weather through a thorny issue that may take a year or two to work its way through to resolution? Our hope is that the painful, difficult experiences will help mature the person in question, and that through the experience they will gain wisdom, as well as a measure of trust and respect from both the executives and their peers.

If you haven’t picked up on it by now, the reality of most business situations is that they are extremely complicated. Kind of like real life. There are rarely cut and dry textbook answers to the dilemmas we face. None of us can predict the future or be precisely confident that every decision we make is the right one. Usually, you don’t know if you’ve made the right decision until weeks or months later.

Last year we took two young, strapping guys who were newly minted MBA’s, and threw them into the ring to see what they were made of. It was clear that these young men had strong leadership potential. But how best to make it shine? Then the perfect opportunity came up. It was almost providential. We had a small business that had been an utter mess over the past three years due to a combination of some bad decision-making on the part of the previous manager  (I wrote about firing this manager in “Who Would Jesus Fire“), along with some just plain ol’ bad luck: regulatory issues, commodity market swings, equipment failures, that sort of thing.

“Well,” said I one day to the Chairman, rubbing my fingers together briskly with an evil glint in my eye, “Why don’t we throw Don and Gary into this stinkhole? It would be a great experience for them, and we can see if they learned anything in business school.’” At this point we throw our heads back and break into such a laughing fit that we can barely continue the conversation. After we calm down, I say. “Seriously. I wonder if they would be able to manage their way through a turnaround?” The Chairman leans back in his chair and gazes up at the ceiling for moment. A sly grin also appears on his face. “Yes,” he says, slowly, calculating. “Let’s see how they do when they actually have to live inside a case study rather than talking about it in a classroom.”  Brilliant.

Sometimes the best thing to help you grow and mature is to be put into a really difficult, challenging situation. God does this to me all the time. He doesn’t care what I think,  because he knows better. He knows what’s best for me. He sees my potential, way beyond what I think I’m capable of myself. I picture Him rubbing his hands together, saying “Oh, just look at him. Bradley’s had it far too easy lately. He’s getting too comfortable. Let’s beat the crap out of him for a while. He’ll thank me later.” If these experiences don’t do you in, they usually provide an excellent opportunity to grow in maturity and stamina. In my company’s case, it also allows the prospective manager to experience the practical realities of leadership, with all the messy employee issues and market chaos and unexpected crap hitting the fan. And we can’t really trust a manager to make major decisions or handle significant responsibilities without having observed them live through some of these situations, and eventually coming out the other side in tact.  

Some people have the stomach for it, and others don’t. You find out fairly quickly. I don’t know why the difficult, gut-wrenching experiences are so crucial, other than they somehow test us – our will, our strength – and humble us at the same time. And that’s how we grow in wisdom and confidence, I guess. Now, there’s a great combination for leaders: wisdom, confidence, and humility.

There’s a huge gap between those who can, and those who can not make that leap. We have plenty of people in our organization who are capable doers, skilled at many areas of business, but who can not seem to cross the line over into this vaguely defined level of maturity. One reason is their lack of willingness to simply take on responsibility for more and more things. Maybe they are scared. Or maybe they are just lazy.  Decision-making in business involves risk, and not everyone has the personal wherewithal for combining personal responsibility with risk. Yet this is how we grow.

Don and Gary did a great job. It was hard at first, but I stayed close to them for the first few months, making sure they knew there was someone to lean on in case things got too hairy. Which they did. But gradually, as they saw the dynamics of navigating the failures and successes and all the in-between stuff, these guys gained confidence in their decision-making. They took more and more personal ownership over the business. Before long, the calls they made to me were not to ask my opinion on what to do, but to inform me of some bold decisions that they needed to make to ensure the turnaround. It was great to watch this transformation. Eighteen months after they started, the business is now solid, stable and more profitable than it has ever been. And I had very little to do with it.

The other day Don thanked me. He said this was the best experience of his career and he wouldn’t have traded anything for it. Did these guys feel like they got a little beat up along the way? Sure they did.

Join the club.

Have you ever been in a meeting, minding your own business, thinking about what restaurant you might want to go for dinner tonight, when suddenly you realize all eyes have turned to you, looking for an opinion? Except that you have no idea what they were just talking about? It’s not that you weren’t paying attention. No, you really were trying to follow the conversation. It’s just that perhaps you are new to the project or to this particular market segment, and these people have been throwing around some god-forsaken set of acronyms and shorthand industry-slang because they are all so familiar with it, but you don’t have a clue what they are talking about, so you drifted off for a moment. What do they expect? You were thrown in to this situation just yesterday! You are trying to provide some kind of leadership and direction to this team, because although these strapping young engineers may have the technical acronyms down pat, it’s all too apparent that they couldn’t organize their way out of your cat’s litter box. This team needs to come to a strategic decision on the best path to move forward, but all they do is talk, talk, talk. That’s why you are there. You are the Big-Picture Guy. And you’ll get them to deliver results.

In situations like this when it seems as if I am in over my head for a moment or two, at first I get all sweaty and red in the face and think to myself how inept I am compared to these geeks. Surely they must think I’m an idiot and a big loser from the ivory towers of downtown Corporate. And how will I ever find the time to learn all of the technical details that they toss around so casually? I even become slightly envious of these subject-matter-experts, the way they have such deep experience in the matters we are discussing, these things that I have never really paid any attention to, nor cared much about at all, up until now.

There’s a name for this, when you come to realize that you don’t know something. It’s called “conscious incompetence.” This condition is a step up from “unconscious incompetence,” where you are in a state of blissful ignorance because you don’t know what you don’t know. Therefore you don’t care. But I have my own non-theoretical term for this phenomenon, when it happens to me. I call it “Feeling Stupid.”

It can be intimidating when everyone in the room knows more than you do about something, or if you find yourseld thrown into a situation where you are in over your head. But it’s not all bad. In fact, I would say that feeling stupid at work can actually be a good sign for your career. Here are some reasons why it’s okay to feel stupid sometimes. 

1. Feeling stupid means that you are outside of your comfort zone. You are taking on new challenges which will allow you to grow and stretch. The Conscious Competence theory would say that you will eventually move through the discomfort of feeling inept into the next stage of learning. So don’t get too uptight. 
2. It means you are not arrogant. The days of the puffed up ego-bloated leader is so five minutes ago, in case you haven’t been reading the business news lately.  A little humility and insecurity can actually be a good thing. In fact, a Harvard Business article calls it the “Imposter Syndrome.”  Most up and coming managers will go through a phase of insecurity, where they are worried that they’ll be uncovered as a fraud. So, no, it’s not just you. Take a deep breath. Relax. You’ll figure it out.  And Jesus tells us that the humble are the ones that will get promoted: “..for everyone who exalts themselves will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). Being humble is a nice way to stay on God’s good side.  
3. It keeps you hungry to learn new information.  The quickest way to stop feeling stupid is to learn – ask dumb questions, read books, do research, start networking, get some mentoring, and then get some good old-fashioned experience. This is ultimately how you will grow, develop, and get ahead. 
4. You’ll be better liked. Let’s be honest, no one wants to work with an arrogant know-it-all blow-hard (or, there is another word you probably would have liked to use. It rhymes with “aerosol”). Someone recently told me that the best manager he ever had was constantly asking for his opinion before making a decision: “Paul, what do you think about this situation? What would you do?” The boss’s respect for his expertise endeared this smart employee to his manager. Go team. 

So, if you are feeling stupid, congratulations! And keep it up! You are probably on your way to a big promotion.

Do you have stupid stories of your own? I’d like to hear about it!

Did anyone catch the Oct 12 WSJ article on Pilgrim’s Pride? This $7.6 billion chicken processing company is fighting for their lives right now, with a looming bankruptcy filing and their stock in the tank at about $1.00 per share, down from $33 a year ago. Much of this turmoil is caused by the confluence of rising input costs and declining demand, colliding with an enormous debt load.

The bulk of this debt came with the acquisition of Gold Kist (a competing chicken processor) two years ago, leaving Pilgrim’s Pride with a 10-1 debt to earnings ratio. In September they announced a $53 million third-quarter loss, and are projecting more bad news for the fourth quarter. Now the banks are swooping in because of some broken covenants, and they are desperately trying to restructure this massive debt in an all-but-locked-up credit market.

But that’s not what caught my eye from this story. What floored me, and embarrassed me, was the quote from the fabled “devout Christian” owner and founder, Bo Pilgrim, regarding his decision to pursue the Gold Kist purchase.

According to the Oct. 12 WSJ:

“At the time of the Gold Kist purchase, Mr. Pilgrim, a devout man, said that the “Lord had foreordained the deal.” In the 2007 second edition of his autobiography, “One Pilgrim’s Progress,” he wrote: “I figured that if the Lord wanted us to succeed, He would help us find the credit.”

Are you kidding me? God told him that the deal was foreordained? The good Lord would help him find credit? And, Surprise! Just in time for the implosion of the commodity and credit markets! This clearly was not a God-deal, but a human-deal driven by one man’s ego dressed up in Christian clothes. They’ve laid off over 2,000 employees and shut down facilities since then. Was that foreordained by the Lord too? No, it’s just bad timing, too much debt, and the luck of the draw. Which, let’s face it, is so often the case in business dealings.

So what do you think? Was Mr. Pilgim’s blathering about God’s special approval of his bad deal a result of: (a) arrogance, (b) ignorance, or (c) just another Christian nutcase making us all look like we’re idiots? Whatever it is, he has crossed the fine line of “putting God first,” to having sprung headlong into putting his ego first and naming it after God. Which sounds a bit like idolatry. Or, just a really, really bad case of spiritual narcissism.

I know that Bo Pilgrim has been very successful and that he has tried to build a company on Christian values, which is admirable. And there’s nothing wrong with utilizing debt for making strategic acquisitions or taking calculated risks. It’s part of making good business decisions and maximizing shareholder value. But praying about it does not mean that God is making guarantees. Failure is always an option. How can any of us ever forget that?

I believe strongly in mingling our personal Christian faith with our work. I believe God cares about my company, my deals, my desire to succeed and prosper, and I will always seek out God’s wisdom and guidance for decisions, both big and small. But I do NOT believe that God owes me success by virtue of the fact that I love Him and have prayed about a strategic decision. I am human, I am flawed, and I am not God’s special Golden Messenger on earth.

Last week, to add to their misery, Pilgrim’s got slapped with a class action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders who bought the company’s stock during the period between May 5 and Sept. 24, 2008, alleging that the company misrepresented its financial position and concealed how its capital problems would affect the business performance.

Gosh, Bo, what would Jesus do?

Pilgrim’s Pride is in for some tough times. This company may come through this yet, by the skin of their teeth. If so, maybe Bo and God will have the last laugh on me. Instead, I hope that this close call is enough to teach Bo Pilgrim a big lesson in spiritual humility. And maybe he’ll spend some time thinking about that second part of his company’s name… “Pride.”