Let your people fix the problem
With a company in turmoil, Puzder says you have to quickly
become comfortable with letting go of many problems.
“You need to hire good people, and then you need to let them do
their job,” he says. “You need to let them do their job and realize
they’re not going to do it perfectly and go from there.”
Letting go isn’t always easy, but if you want to take an organization in a new direction, you need to focus on your biggest problem.
“I realized early on you could get a lot more done if you had five
people doing it for you, or with you, than you could if you were trying to do all of the work yourself or expecting it to be perfect,”
Puzder says.
In so doing, you’ll create a lesson in empowerment across the
company.
“They see what you’re doing and the fact that maybe you’re getting a lot more done with a lot less effort, and a smart person is
going to pick up on that pretty quick,” he says. “The other part is
just direct them to do it, say, ‘Hey, look, don’t do that. Let Jeff do it
because I don’t want you wasting your time on that. I want you to
do X; you let Jeff do Y, and don’t worry about it.’ It’s teaching and
example.”
As he was bringing in unique talent at CKE, Puzder doled out
duties accordingly.
“I really delegated responsibility,” he says. “I took (Chief
Administrative Officer, Executive Vice President of Franchising and
General Counsel) Mike Murphy and put him in charge of refranchising restaurants at Hardee’s. We sold a large number of markets
to franchisees and used that money to pay down the debt. I brought
our marketing head in and said, ‘Here’s the problems we’re facing;
here’s what I think we need to do. Now, you need to figure out what
we need to do from a marketing perspective.’”
With new personnel focused on sparking the company, Puzder
felt comfortable letting these duties go so he could work on the
front lines. An added bonus was the energy inserted into the organization.
“Once I came in, and people felt like we had a direction and
we had a plan, morale kind of took care of itself,” Puzder says.
“Things began happening, and when things begin happening,
people get excited about it.”