Michael Robb was prepared to be disliked on his first day.
Tough decisions would need to be made to keep the jobs of his 52 new employees and keep the organization, Center for Community Resources Inc., out of bankruptcy.
“You have to have courage that you’re not going to be liked,” Robb says about stepping into a leadership role in a turnaround situation. “You have to understand who you can trust, and put your faith and trust in those individuals. You have to know who the players are in the organization and assess that very quickly, because you can’t do it alone.”
Robb’s first days were spent talking to employees on all levels to determine the human services organization’s finances and problem areas. Connecting with employees early allowed Robb easier buy-in during the turnaround implementation.
That was 2005. Since then, CCR has grown its staff to 89 and has an annual budget of $4.5 million. Seeing the need to help nonprofit organizations, Robb and his team started Alliance for Nonprofit Resources Inc. and Nonprofit Development Corp. As executive director of the organizations, Robb oversees 130 employees and budgets of nearly $8.5 million.
Smart Business spoke with Robb about how to turn around a company.
Q. Where do you start in a turnaround situation?
What happens is sometimes you go into a situation and people feel like you should have all of the answers because you’re hired. You shouldn’t ask questions to be able to enact policies. People see asking questions as a sign of weakness or that you don’t know what you’re doing.
I always feel like you have to go into some kind of temporary incompetence. When you walk into a scene, you really need to understand what the culture and the structure is that you’re going to be working in. Those are two critical elements that you need to evaluate: How are things getting done? What is the philosophy behind which those things are done?
Q. To whom do you ask questions?
No matter where the company is at when you come in, you have to be open to everybody who might provide feedback to you.
Some do it willingly; they just come to you. They may come to you for a lot of different reasons and a lot of different motives. Others, you have to seek out. That’s where it gets difficult, because who is going to provide you with reliable information and who is going to provide you with information that is not necessarily in the agency’s best interest, but it’s in that person’s best interest, too. You have to evaluate that.