Make the tough decisions

Daniel Hamburger, president and CEO, DeVry Inc.

Daniel Hamburger and DeVry Inc.
had never hit a bump before the holding company for DeVry University
suddenly slipped from net income of
$52 million in fiscal 2004 to $18 million in 2005. When it came time to
address what had caused the bump,
Hamburger put everyone into full
turnaround mode and led growth initiatives. Part of that process meant
that Hamburger had some tough personnel decisions to make about
whether people were still the right
fit for the company and its new
growth.

“There are situations where somebody did a pretty good job, but
they are really not the right person
for the challenges going forward,
so maybe there’s a better role for
them,” he says. “Those can be a little bit challenging for all of us as
leaders because it’s easier when
the person is a poor performer or if
they are pretty good but in some
way they didn’t live the values of
the organization or just did something wrong. But the tough one is
you know they are doing some
things really well, but, hand on
your heart, they’re really not the
fit. If that job was open, and they
were one of the candidates, you
wouldn’t hire them even though
they’ve been around for a long
time.”

Hamburger doesn’t profess that his heart-check method is unique to
him, but it was adapted by his team
at DeVry to make sure the staff was
ready for growth.

“I’ve used that many times to challenge people where they’ve been
struggling,” he says. “And you just
kind of see their body language and
they just go, ‘You’re right, you
nailed it, I wouldn’t hire this person
if it were open. So you say, ‘OK,
now we know where we need to go
to help that person make a transition.’”

Working through tough decisions
like that, DeVry improved to $76 million in net income on $934 million in
revenue in fiscal 2007.