Avoid Generic Executive X
The first step in a turnaround is to bring innovation and energy
back, so Puzder didn’t wait long to make his first move.
“On the way to the office, not even there, I met the head of marketing for Hardee’s and fired him,” he says.
The idea was twofold. First, he knew that the company’s marketing was broken. Instead of having a distinct name in the business,
Hardee’s menu had fried chicken, generic hamburgers, roast beef —
anything its competitors offered was simply tacked on to its own menu, resulting in a hodgepodge menu that was trying to be all
things to all people. Second, he also wanted everyone to know one
thing: He was looking for innovation and personal responsibility. He
continued that in hiring a replacement.
“I interviewed about 15 people, and they were all kind of the same
person,” he says. “They had all worked at the same places, had the
same titles, it was like you just had this merry-go-round of marketing
people that went through these different companies and came in and
nothing ever changed.”
So Puzder called everyone in the business until he found and
hired the person that had been the head of marketing for Jack in
the Box Inc. in the ’90s. That food franchise had a deadly outbreak
of the E. coli virus in 1993 and had been able to come back strong.
Puzder knew that instead of hiring “Generic Executive X,” he had
someone who had faced uncharted territories in the business.
To Puzder, the problem with most stalled companies is that the
parts that make it up no longer understand how to identify a way
to separate your business in the market. Finding people who will
add innovation is key to your ability to delegate responsibilities, so
he looks for people with energy and something to prove.
“I want people that are very dedicated to what they are doing and
are enthusiastic about it — not just knowledgeable but sort of
burned out and just looking for a place to spend the rest of their
career,” Puzder says. “I don’t want somebody that’s too bureaucratic, somebody that’s been in a large organization and is used to
things being done by committee as opposed to making decisions.
“If you’re bumping them up a little bit, you’re probably going to
end up with a more enthusiastic employee — somebody trying to
show that they can climb this next mountain. If you are hiring
somebody that’s done this at three other companies, there’s probably a reason they’ve done it at three other companies.”