The year was 1994, and Brian Scudamore had expanded the junk-moving company he had started five years before to the point where it was a successful 11-employee company.
But there was a big problem.
“I realized just how much passion I had lost for building my business … I realized that I was retreating from my employees and I wasn’t spending much time with them because I knew in my mind I didn’t have the right people in place,” Scudamore said.
Scudamore’s solution? Fire everybody.
“I thought, I’ve got nine people here that really don’t fit with my values, my vision, the culture, I’ve got two that I could maybe save and work with,” he said. “But I thought, ‘Really, the damage has been done and one bad apple or nine bad apples spoil the other two.’
“I decided to start over.”
Scudamore had to live with the painful consequences in the weeks following the mass firing as he struggled to run the business solo.
He rebuilt his team from the ground up, this time focusing on hiring for attitude, and then training the new hires to build skills.
“They have to fit with our culture and vision,” he said. “We don’t take people and mould them into who we want them to be; we find people who are already the way we want them to be – happy people who are smart and passionate.”
Changing that hiring culture started with bringing in the right human resources people, and putting in place an executive team that leads by example, Scudamore said.
“We’re trying very hard to scale the business by finding the right people,” he said.
On common hiring mistakes | “They rush, they make decisions on people too quickly. I hired a COO/president; she was an ex-president of Starbucks’ U.S. operations and it turned out to be not the right fit for both of us … I got it right the third time when I brought [current COO] Eric Church on board because … we spent a lot of time getting to know each other and getting to know the people that we both worked with.”
Next Life Lesson: Daniel Frankel, president and CEO, Daniel Group and Tap & Barrel Restaurants. Has a work or life challenge taught you a key career lesson? Contact Jen St. Denis at [email protected].
Next Life Lesson – Daniel Frankel, president and CEO, Daniel Group and Tap & Barrel Restaurants
Has a work or life challenge taught you a key career lesson? Contact Jen St. Denis at [email protected]
