Get people engaged
Glimcher needed $200 million. So the first thing he did was go to his people. He wasn’t looking for handouts to pay down the debt. Rather, Glimcher sought to assure employees that he was going to find a way to raise the money and pay off the massive debt.
“I made it real clear to everyone, ‘We’re going to win here,” Glimcher says. “‘We’re going to get through the issues we have to get through. Everyone who believes that we can get through it should be here. If there’s anyone who doesn’t believe we can get through these issues, you shouldn’t be here.’”
Glimcher wanted to express both confidence and resolve in his ability to turn the company around. But he was blunt about the steps it might take to accomplish this feat.
“Rather than giving people part of the story or half the story, we said, ‘Here’s exactly what’s going on,” Glimcher says. “‘We might be selling your mall.’ Frankly, we needed the help of the team to market the asset so we could get people excited about it. We had different potential investors coming through.”
So how do you get employees engaged in a battle to save a business when they may not even be part of that business when all the dust settles?
You get them doing whatever they can to make that move of last resort unnecessary. You get them focusing on the things in their world that they can control.
“The message is, if you do your job and if you do what you’re responsible for and you do it really well, it’s going to be a lot easier for us,” Glimcher says. “You need to instill confidence in the team.”
That begins with getting out of your office and becoming more visible with your employees. The more you hide, the more you raise suspicions.
“People are uncomfortable and nervous,” Glimcher says. “People want to be assured of what’s going on. I’d tell our company officers, ‘Get out of your office. Walk around. Meet with your department. Sit down and have a cup of coffee. Tell people what’s going on.’”
As you encourage your leaders to be more visible and more available, you should be working on getting the message out about the big picture.
“We called a state-of-the-company meeting and I outlined every issue we were dealing with and what we had to do to be a healthier company,” Glimcher says. “‘Here are the three or four most critical issues we have to correct. Here are the things we absolutely have to do, and when we do X, Y and Z, we’ll be in a much better place.’”
You’re not making promises that anyone’s job is untouchable. But you are engaging your employees in the effort to get things fixed and you’re showing them that you and your team is working right along side them in order to make things right.
“If you treat people nicely and you genuinely care about them and you’re incredibly honest with them about what’s going on, I think people really appreciate that,” Glimcher says.
