{"id":516,"date":"2008-04-10T20:34:36","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T20:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.department99.com\/bobamter\/?p=516"},"modified":"2012-09-14T17:31:58","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T17:31:58","slug":"kinko%e2%80%99s-was-it-damaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"Kinko\u2019s. Was it Damaged?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Claudia H. Deutsch of the NY Times reported on Clayton, Dubilier &amp; Rice\u2019s management of Kinko\u2019s on May 5th 2007 with an article titled\u00a0<em>&#8220;Paper Jam At FedEx Kinko&#8217;s&#8221;<\/em>. One quote referring to the culture change:\u00a0<em>\u201cSome say Clayton, Dubilier massacred Kinko\u2019s, and that FedEx can never repair the damage.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On March 8, 2008 the New York Times reported again on the issue,\u00a0<em>\u201c&#8230;the unit has underperformed since FedEx bought the business for $2.4 billion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In my experience as CEO, a culture change was necessary in every turnaround I have managed. The turnarounds were largely penal colonies staffed with brow beaten and frightened officers and managers. The uncoordinated top-down, silo management process was used. Analysis made it clear that mistakes mounted and financial deterioration occurred a matter of months following the start of a punishing culture.<\/p>\n<p>Improving the cultures was accomplished via cross-functional communication meetings with candid discussions at all organization levels. Once an improved culture was accomplished and a self-confident team was developed, profits followed shortly thereafter \u2013 usually in just a few months.<\/p>\n<p>One lesson I learned seeing the consequences of the angry, confrontational style used by Emerson Electric Co.\u2019s CEO was not to bully and yell at employees. As CEO I want strong, assertive but civil officers and managers to build a solid performing company. A CEO can whisper and get results.<\/p>\n<p>Emerson Electric conducted anonymous employee opinion surveys annually on each of its divisions. Ironically, if a division president was confrontational with employees and maintained a punishing culture, Chuck Knight would remove him.<\/p>\n<p>As Peter Drucker and Jim Collins advise, use metrics to make people accountable for tangible results. Fire the non-performers. Only deal in brutal facts in an open culture in which everything can be discussed. A tyrant style can sometimes get immediate profit improvement, but it usually results in the company becoming uncoordinated followed by unexpected mistakes and short-term profit decline. It can make the sale of the company problematic if potential buyers realize the management is weak.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-url=\"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/?p=516\" data-text=\"Kinko\u2019s. Was it Damaged?\" data-count=\"horizontal\">Tweet<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Claudia H. Deutsch of the NY Times reported on Clayton, Dubilier &amp; Rice\u2019s management of Kinko\u2019s on May 5th 2007 with an article titled\u00a0&#8220;Paper Jam At FedEx Kinko&#8217;s&#8221;. One quote referring to the culture change:\u00a0\u201cSome say Clayton, Dubilier massacred Kinko\u2019s, and that FedEx can never repair the damage.\u201d On March 8, 2008 the New York [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,44,14,24],"tags":[49,67,101,50,100,234,61],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-companies-to-work-for","category-blog","category-ceos","category-kinkos","tag-analysis","tag-chief-executive-officers","tag-clayton-dubilier-rice","tag-culture-change","tag-fedex","tag-kinkos","tag-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}