Build your case
Prieur saw the Carmel consolidation as the first step to resolving the inefficiency that he found throughout the company upon his arrival at CNO in early 2006. But he had to sell his leadership team on the idea before he could bring it to everyone else.
“You have to get people to wrap their minds around what you are trying to do,” Prieur says. “I thought it made sense. I shared it with the board and the management committee, the guys who report directly to me. We talked about it quite a bit.”
Prieur needed to show them the products that were losing money for the company. He needed to illustrate the lack of focus the company had about what it did best.
“We were selling products in markets where we weren’t very competitive and we really couldn’t be very competitive,” Prieur says. “It wasn’t playing to our strengths.”
He thought the consolidation would be a good starting point to streamlining the entire business. But he wanted his team’s input in order to be sure it was the right move to make.
“It’s like carpentry,” Prieur says. “They say, ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Be very careful with what you’re planning ahead of time. Make sure you’ve identified who is going to be running the project and what the project benefits are going to be. Once you launch it, you’re going to finish it. You’re going to do it. Nothing is going to stop you once you launch it. Make sure all the questions that may have come up are asked and answered before you make the announcement to the staff.”
There were concerns about the change initially. And there were concerns about the fact that Prieur was the latest in a revolving door of CEOs in recent years. So he took a measured approach to make sure his team knew this wasn’t a rash move.
“People have to understand you’re committed to the company and that the company’s best interests are what’s driving you,” Prieur says. “That has to become clear. So when you do a change and you explain why it’s going to benefit the policyholder, the shareholder and the company in the long run, that’s really important.”
Prieur had a pretty good feeling that this move of employees from Chicago to Carmel was a good one. But he didn’t want to come across as heavy-handed with his leadership team. And he wanted to be able to present a united front when it came time to announce the move to the masses.
“The way I approached it was, ‘Here’s a notion,’” Prieur says. “I would send out notes that I would call, ‘Thoughts about …’ If I send out a memo saying, ‘Thoughts about …,’ my direct reports know this is what I’m thinking. I’m not locked into these positions yet. Here’s what I’m thinking. That’s the first stage. I’m thinking about it. I’m sharing it with them. I’m getting input from them.”
Your approach goes a long way toward your success in earning support for your idea.
“If you approach it as if the people you are working with are your colleagues, you’re just the most senior colleague, and you actually use their input, they get it that you’re not determining everything yourself,” Prieur says. “They understand you’re actually taking their ideas, modifying your own ideas and sometimes abandoning your own ideas. You’ve got the people who are directly under you who feel like they own whatever you’re doing, because they are part of the decision to do it. Right off the bat, you don’t look like Attila the Hun.”
Prieur explained to his team what he saw in terms of the redundancy of operation in the business.
“You realize someone is doing something in Carmel and someone in Chicago is doing the same thing,” Prieur says. “Why can’t it be done by one person?”
He started broaching the subject of other concerns, such as products that weren’t selling and a focus that seemed to be drifting, that could be addressed later. But this would be his first move. He wanted the team to understand that once the decision was made, there could be no turning back. He would need their full support.
“Once you start a project, there’s (no way) you’re going to stop the project,” Prieur says.
