Make good decisions
McAleese wants to double the size of the company from what it was in 2006 before things started to go downhill. This may seem silly, impossible or maybe even frivolous given the economy now, but it’s actually quite relevant to the second step in leading a company through hard times: making good decisions within the options you’ve laid out.
“You have to start with what’s your long-term vision,” he says. “Where do you want to be in the long term? Whatever decisions you’re making, you can’t sacrifice that. You’ve got to keep that out there in front of you of where you’re trying to go with the business. You can’t let yourself get carried away with the current situation and not recognize the context of the long term.”
Look at what fuels that as well as the roadblocks.
“You have to identify what the biggest issues are,” he says. “If you’re going to be successful this year, why are you going to be successful? What are those couple of items that you absolutely have to do to be successful, and if you’re going to fail this year, what are those couple of things that will cause you to fail? Then make sure you manage around those things.”
Knowing where you want to be down the road makes it easier to look at your options objectively.
“Then you have to really evaluate what’s the impact on the organization of taking each of these steps,” McAleese says. “What’s the impact of our strategic long-term, strategic intent? What’s the impact on the people in our organization? These are very painful and difficult decisions, not just for the leadership team but for the organization because we’re impacting people’s lives.”
Have other people help you in that process so you can overcome your own preconceived notions. McAleese engages his HR team so he can have a better idea of how people will react. He also has a team of about 15 to 20 senior people help him in making big decisions.
“You can’t have 50 people in the conversation, but if you do it with three or four, I think you’re making a mistake,” he says. “You need to have a good cross section that you get different inputs and points of view.”
The kind of people you involve in making decisions is crucial.
“You have to surround yourself with people who have an opinion and are in touch with the organization and that are willing to voice their opinion and are willing to disagree with you,” he says. “You have to be able to have this fruitful discussion, and it can’t just be a rubber stamp of something or a recommendation that comes into the meeting — not in these times. You have to really have good viable discussion on each of those items.”
During those discussions, be careful not to put your opinion out there too early because it can shut down the conversation. It’s also helpful to vocalize both sides of the argument.
“I have to play devil’s advocate sometimes on some things I don’t support,” he says. “I’ve got to be engaged in the conversation, but I’ve got to be willing to take both sides of an issue. I’ve got to be willing to take the side that I don’t really believe in and ask questions around that so that I try to balance the discussion because I can shut the discussion down by just asking all the questions on one side of the issue.
“ … As a leadership trait, the ability to ask questions and ask the right questions is critically important.”
Then make sure you work through all of the ideas and suggestions.
“You’re making decisions to get to an objective, and you can’t get hung up on one item,” McAleese says. “You can’t get hung up that this is the right answer. You have to be willing to explore all of them. You have a solution you need to get to, and there are multiple ways of getting there.”
Going through this process helps ensure that you don’t make rash decisions too quickly. For example, a lot of times when business gets tough, management first turns to cutting people, but that’s not always the best solution. Instead, McAleese said that was the last thing he wanted to do, so instead Bendix instituted a hiring freeze, lowered both executive and employee pay, discontinued its tuition reimbursement program, and trimmed other benefits. Additionally, the company put management processes in place to react to issues the business and industry were facing.
After doing those things and realizing that he was going to have to let people go after all, he first evaluated every salaried position in the company — about 800 of the 2,000 people.
He looked at which positions could be eliminated permanently, and those people would be let go. Then he looked at positions the company needed for the long term but could do without for the short term and what projects could be delayed, and all of those people were to be furloughed.
“People rush to conclusion on that stuff way too quickly,” he says. “We had that at the end of our decision-making process. That was the last thing that we implemented.”
