Good to Great to Gone
Here Today; Gone Tomorrow
It seems like only yesterday that I read Jim Collin’s book GOOD TO GREAT. He followed companies from 1965 to 1995, and made a list of those which had gone from “good” to “great” in that time. They were:
Abbot Laboratories
Circuit City
Fannie Mae
Gillette
Kimberly-Clark
Kroger
Nucor
Philip Morris
Pitney Bowes
Walgreens
Wells Fargo
A look at that list 14 years later shows some big changes.
Like This One
Circuit City apparently found reverse gear somewhere along the way. CNN just announced that Circuit City’s will close 567 U.S. stores employing 34,000 employees. They plan to launch a liquidation sale immediately and run it through March 31, providing they get court approval. They will shut down their website and call center on January, 18. I found it odd that they plan to continue to operate their Canadian operations, which employ 3,000 workers.
The most significant comment in the article (to me) was citing a decision to “get rid of salespeople” as one of the reasons for their downfall. My thought was, “Duh!” This is what happens when the importance of good salespeople is underestimated. We certainly saw that during the demise of CompUSA here in Honolulu. The person who is face-to-face with the customer is the most important person in the company.
January 18th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Companies don’t destroy companies - nor does the economy! Companies destroy themselves.
Circuit City failed on a number of fronts, including:
1. holding onto legacy, out-of-reach locations when customers were wanting more convenience
2. missing important market trends like the strong demand for hand-helds.
3. inability to roll-out Firedog quickly and smoothly.
Combine the above with thin margins, brutal competition and management’s fumbling of critical HR issues and you’ve got the baiser de la mort (kiss of death!)
January 18th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Hello All, I assume Circuit City was/is in the electronic communications field - mobiles etc? Anyway, as mentioned above, critical HR issues come to mind, poor hiring and training practices, lack of proper controls everywhere including ‘headoffice’ and as you say Ron “Duh!?” If I have assumed product correctly, then product training was also (or would have been) crucial - there are and will always be many peope who avoid insurance sales for the same reasons, product offerings and terms and conditions of leasing and use of product just too complicated unless presented properly and with understanding, both to the mass market and to the individual customer. Hopefully, a lot of the good, better best people will be picked up by the retail market; top sales people we know are worth their weights in gold! If this were South Africa, I would also suggest that in the interests of good governance, a very close check be kept on severance packages and bonuses paid out to failed executives in the know - and if there is any transparancy at all, for this to be dealt with appropriately. What chance do you have of that happening in the US? Would be interested to know.
Cheers
Lestie
Johannesburg S A
March 10th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
This…
Have you been blogging long? maysblog ” Blog Archive ” All about careers is a great blog, you have a great writing style too. Found this post last Wednesday and i’ve been reading your blog since. I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed and I am excited …
March 10th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Interesting; I was told the RSS feed is not working. Is it for you; or are you Spamming your way in here with that nice comment?
Your reply to this will tell me. I can usually spot those, but yours sounds sincere; I hope that it is.
November 15th, 2010 at 1:56 am
Circuit City has suffered the same fate as many other corporations. With thousands of new MBAs graduating from top schools, big corporations got top heavy with brilliant young minds that had no real world experience. They thought it would be clever to add a commission structure to employee pay(thereby reducing the amount they had to pay in raises), but then failed to implement the proper training and standards. The net result was customers felt like they were being attacked by ravenous wolves when they enetered a Circuit City store. It didn’t take long and people were driving across town to see, and buy from, the helpful people at Best Buy.
Fire the sales force? No, fire the boneheads who made this decision, get proper training for the sales people and you still might have a chance. Christmas is just around the corner.