Use data
Chiricosta is a numbers man, and that wasn’t about to change just because he had a fancier title.
As an employment-based business, if one of his customers had 100 employees but then laid off 25, MMO just lost 25 percent of its business from that group, and that was increasingly happening. He knew numbers don’t lie.
“We had to be able to adjust our staffing levels, and I didn’t want to do it by whacking 50 people or 75 people,” he says. “To me, you have to start that now — you have to start that right away because we knew the situation where we would be looking at an overstaff situation would come sooner rather than later.”
So one of the first decisions he made was that any vacancy or request for added staff was going to be heavily scrutinized in ways it hadn’t been before. And he started with himself. Since he had been promoted, his previous position was open.
“Here’s where objectivity starts at home,” he says. “I never believed that my job that I had before was supported for the level I was at.
“I would have jumped off the roof if [Kent] asked me to, so now I’m in this job, and the first question people ask me is, ‘Who’s going to replace you?’ and what did I say? ‘No one.’”
Instead, he took the different pieces of his position and returned them to the departments that had handled them before and asked a few key people to take on a little extra work — which most were glad to do since this was the baby of the CEO. One position saved. One strong message sent.
“What did it do?” he says. “… I was able to say, ‘See guys, my first move is I’m not even replacing me.’ That was a very strong message.”
In addition to his position, when a couple of retirements in the senior management came up, he chose not to replace those, as well, ultimately going from 10 executive vice presidents to six.
“If we go to our staff and say, ‘We want to do more with less,’ isn’t it important to start at the top?” he says. “Suppose I had gone from 10 to 13. We’ve cut 100 people at our troop level, but we’ve fattened our executive level? I don’t think that’d go over well.”
The company is down 40 percent in its senior management, and he says you have to start at the top in those situations.
“It plays very well with the staff when you can say, ‘We did it, too,’” he says. “I’m not cutting your benefits; I’m not cutting you. … And they realize the financial impact of adding an executive or getting rid of an executive is significantly more than the impact of a lower-level position, so it really sends a strong message.”
After having done it himself, then he could challenge everyone else when they had requests.
“You have to be consistent in that respect,” Chiricosta says. “You can’t say that, and then when you have a big decision to make, you can’t have any exceptions.”
Chiricosta has a human resource committee meeting every month where they analyze requests to add new positions or replace vacant ones. In one, someone wanted to replace two people, and he really challenged them.
“I said, ‘I may be wrong. I may not know exactly what goes on in that department, but here’s what I want you to do; I want you to come back to me with the facts that will refute what I’m throwing on the table,’” he says.
On the way out of that meeting, someone commented that he sure knew a lot for someone at his level.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if I do or not, but I know enough to be dangerous,’” he says. “There it is — throw the issue on the table, give them the opportunity to come back and say, ‘You were close, but not exact,’ and I’m OK with that.”
Using data is key to making strong decisions.
“I don’t prefer to do things just because — it’s not playing favorites,” he says. “I try to do everything based on sound data and analysis. What makes sense and why? I may really like you, but if you’ve got an operation that’s got 12 people doing something that ought to have six, I’m going to ask you, ‘Why do you have 12 people when everything I know says there ought to be six people doing that job? What’s up with that?’”
When you do this, it teaches your employees to get data, as well, instead of making rash decisions.
“Sometimes, the people who are putting a recommendation don’t even know themselves,” he says. “Sometimes you’re forcing. And I’ve had people say, ‘I’m glad you made me go back and get the data — I had no idea that we got that many phone calls.’”
And employees appreciate the opportunity to defend their decision instead of simply having a request shot down.
“Your job is to explain it to me, as opposed to, because you’re my friend, you can ask for six extra people because I know it’s just nice for you to have,” he says. “People respond well when they know that objectivity and accountability are parts of the equation.”
Today, MMO is down about 120 employees, and 99 percent of that has been through attrition. At a company town-hall meeting in the fall, when the company was down about 100 people, Chiricosta explained that.
“You share things — ‘Hey, we’re down 100 employees; did you guys know that? We have 100 less employees today than we had, and guess what? With no layoffs,’” he says. “You know what kind of response that got? Every time, huge applause. Our employees appreciated that because they know that was helping their job security.”
