Meet Mr Gimme-More
The employee assessment of that employee who always wants more
Corporate America offers some fascinating wildlife that you seldom see in the world of entrepreneurship and results-oriented work. In the Meet Mr Series, we meet some of these corporate creatures and their challenges for talent management. One costly creature in corporate America is Mr Gimme-More! Mr Gimme-More does not understand how to sense a business cycle or business challenges. When a company faces turmoil, Mr Gimme-More will use this challenge as proof that the company needs to do more for their employees. Rather than sense the challenge or why the company's approach to clients may be wrong, Mr Gimme-More does not actively listen - they believe that companies exist to nurture their every need.
But first, a fictional story. Because I'm creating a fictional stories as examples in this series, I'll call Mr Gimme-More in my story Garin. As a reminder, our fictional company is ABCZ Corporation.
Story
Employees piled into an open conference room with some sitting in the few available chairs and others standing against the wall. The executive team walked in and sat in their chairs at the front of the room. Jared stood from his chair and walked to the center of the front. "The executives and I agreed yesterday that while we know this meeting will be difficult, we must address what's happening now and not wait." Everyone could feel the tension as neither Jared nor any of the executives looked happy.
"To say that we are struggling is an understatement," Jared began. "Last year, we at ABCZ Corporation expected to grow 30%. Up until October, our income was pacing only slightly below this growth and we expected that our fourth quarter would be strong and take us over this growth target." Jared pointed to a presentation slide that showed a chart of the income by quarter from the previous year. "As we can all see, our fourth quarter did not achieve this objective. We lost clients." Jared stopped speaking and looked around the room. "I think everyone should really look at this fourth quarter on this chart - there's no growth but a loss." He paused again, "What does this say about our company?"
Jared changed the presentation slide, "We all know that inflation has been higher than expected. It's driving higher costs for businesses everywhere - many of our clients have told us this. Just yesterday, I spoke with a client we've worked with for over a decade and the executive from their company told me that they can't afford the higher costs, so they're in the process of closing down part of their business that we exclusively service." He paused again while looking around the room. "That is one of our top paying clients for ten years and they're now closing an entire part of their business." He pointed to the door, as if it was inflation itself, "I know we want to blame inflation here, but this client is only now starting to shut this operation down, which means this loss hadn't hit us last year, but it will this year." He paused. "We expect this year to be even tougher than last year's fourth quarter." He switched to another side, "So yes, inflation is having an impact on us."
The new slide showed a robot with artificial intelligence as the headline. "We also are seeing an impact on our business from AI," Jared began after a brief pause. "Let's be blunt - none of us know how AI will impact our business in the long run. Given that we're seeing fewer people sign up for our services, the executive team here has wondered if AI is part of why. Could AI do a better job at servicing our customers?" He paused again while looking back at his slide. "Given its relatively low cost, customers may think that AI will provide a better service than we do and use it instead. We don't know, but our customers are cutting back their spending so this may be something they're investigating." An employee raised her hand in the the audience and Jared pointed to her, "Yes."
"They almost never addressed the topic at my university, so I'm curious - will artificial intelligence make our business irrelevant?" Lucy asked after Jared had pointed at her to speak. She had recently joined the company after being a college graduate and had worked as an intern for two summers. Like everyone in the room, she had read stories about the impact of AI, but she had noticed that her university didn't seem to adjust to this reality or what would come from this reality.
Jared paused and he observed that many employees were shifting in their chairs uncomfortably as Lucy's question is one that many felt. "We don't know," he began. He looked back to his slide and then returned his gaze to the room. "Business often comes in cycles and technology can shift cycles. We've seen this in the past, so we don't know how AI will change our customer's behavior." He paused again. "What we do know is that our customers are slower to spend on what we're offering than they were before now and while this is happening, we're seeing shifts in AI."
Jared changed the presentation to a slide that showed finances. "Another trend we're seeing with our clients is that their borrowing costs have soared." He pointed to a number on the slide, "In the past, we grew rapidly because our customers costs for every product they sold was low. But if you notice this figure here, the costs have risen 40% for product creation. When our clients first told us this, we didn't know how this could be because a 40% rise in cost seems extremely high." Jared looked over to the executives sitting at the front of the room, "I'll have Sarah explain this to everyone, as she's our chief financial officer and understands these financial nuances."
Sarah stood up, "Hello everyone, I'm Sarah as Jared said. I know this is a tough presentation to hear and I'm grateful that Jared is transparently sharing with everyone our challenges. The more we know, the more we can adapt to this environment." Sarah pointed to the number on the presentation, "As Jared mentioned our clients have seen a cost rise of 40% in creating products. Like he says, this seemed wrong to us at first even though this is what our clients were reporting. When we investigated these numbers we found numerous problems that were causing the rise in costs: borrowing costs have increased, which has resulted in some companies going bankrupt, which has in turn created a shortage of products. That shortage has in turn created a rise in products needed because they're no longer abundant." Sarah paused for a bit. "I'm not sure if any of you have ever heard the old idiom of 'the only cure for low prices is low prices' but that's what we're seeing here. Because the product prices were so low for so long, many companies producing these products have gone bankrupt when borrowing costs rose. This in turn has created a major shortage. Our clients are now feeling this shortage."
"Well my food has risen in price and I've just had to 'deal with it'", an employee, Garin, said from the audience. "I probably shouldn't say this, but a lot of us are feeling the stress of higher prices right now so when you tell us that the clients are feeling the stress, I'm like 'so what' because we all are feeling that. Our clients should recognize that cutting back on business with us won't help us out."
Sarah nodded as she replied, "Yes everyone is feeling the stress of higher prices. I've worked in finance for twenty years and have never seen an inflationary environment like this, especially considering that a lot of the inflation is underreported because inflation measurements tend to include products that none of us need." She pointed back to the numbers on the presentation, "But we also need to consider that if our client's financial situation isn't great, they'll have to cutback on contracts with us. Jared asked me to share this with everyone so we all know the situations our clients face - they're struggling to buy the resources that makeup their product and they're struggling to pay all their borrowing costs. We should consider this." She turned back to Jared, "Thank you for allowing me to present this."
Jared returned to the front of the room. "Thank you Sarah." He changed slides then started again, "As we see, our clients are considering AI and are struggling financially given the current environment. But that's not all and I think we can finally talk about the biggest challenge our clients face." On the slide the word "Time" appeared in red letters. "Our clients have been re-evaluating how they spend their time and they've found that most of their time is being invested in activities that generate no return. Guess where our business falls in this analysis?" Jared looked around at the audience and no one said anything. "No return." He paused again and shook his head. "Think about that. Our clients evaluated doing business with us and found that they invest a lot of time working with us - meetings with them, providing documentation and materials we ask for, ongoing support for issues, and a lot of requests to them. Yet when they evaluate what they get from all this work the answer is nothing or very little relative to the work they invest. Our clients are telling us essentially that for every $1 they spend with us, they get five cents of value. Think about what that means."
Almost as if he had had enough of the presentation, Garin stood up and started rapidly speaking, "Please invest in us! Please give us time and budget to improve our skills while on the clock! We can deliver a better experience to our clients if you help us! Please consider that our personal success directly means client success. Our current work schedules do not give us the flexibility or time to make that learning investment! The most successful companies in the world ensure that there are personal growth opportunities for their people by giving them time on the clock to learn! Please consider how investing by giving us extra time and resources will pay off with fewer costs, higher employee satisfaction and a better client experience!" Garin finally caught a breath before running through another mini-speech, "All you keep talking about is the client. The client this, the client that, the client, the client, the client! What about us? Clients need to get through their thick heads that if they constantly expect us to deliver results, we'll suffer burnout. We need breaks! We need vacations! We need time to learn! It's not all about the clients! Yet all we keep hearing is clients blah, blah, blah, blah!"
Jared looked at Garin and sighed aloud. "The executives and I understand your frustration. We've talked endlessly about how we can provide everyone more time to learn and grow their skills." He paused for a few seconds while looking around the room. "We recognize the importance of skill growth, but we have to be careful. Clients do not want us to be learning skills while they pay us. They are clear that we are responsible for hiring skilled workers and educating our workers. This is why the executives and I have discussed what our company can do to help." He pointed back to the presentation, "But without clients, even we are limited by how much money we can invest in everyone's learning."
"But it's not our responsibility! It's the client who has needs, not us!" Garin shouted quickly. "Clients need to pay for us to learn our skills to help them!" Several employees sitting near him stood up and moved him to sit down and calm down.
"While I understand your frustration - and everyone's frustration - clients have contracts with us that are built around the results we get for them," Jared began. "I feel your frustration, but we cannot go back to our clients and tell them they have to pay us to teach all of you." Jared paused while turning off his presentation. "I have never been one who's enjoyed giving bad news, but we're in a tough spot. Over the coming month, we'll be making cutbacks. We hate doing this, but without clients continuing business we don't have a choice. I thank all of you for your time."
What the Research Shows
I personally find Mr Gimme-More a peculiar creature, as I've successfully negotiated raises numerous times in my career with talent management. However, I have never once tried to negotiate a raise when a company was facing a challenging business moment. One of the most memorable raises I negotiated, I successfully managed to get raises for my entire team that I led at the time. Here's what most people skip hearing when I tell this story - my team and I had just saved the business over $10 million per month. When you save a company a lot of money, negotiating a raise for a team makes sense because that team just generated a savings of over $120 million per year. Imagine if I tried negotiating a raise for my team after the company lost $100 million?
As counterintuitive as it sounds, almost one out of five executives at companies I've talked with have told me that they see a rise in expectations from their employees when they need to make cutbacks. This even occurs after the business transparently communicates their struggle to employees. In other words, the business is struggling and yet some employees think they deserve more! This is the equivalent to someone trying to lose weight, but gaining 5lbs and deciding that they'll eat three extra donuts as rewards for "trying" to lose weight. Entitled employees can bankrupt a company because a company exists to meet their client's needs. If we look at the story again from this view, we notice that employees who ask Jared questions are never concerned about their client's needs or how their client's needs evolve. The employees in the story only show concern for what they get out of the transaction with their clients, not what value they provide.
Costs
One of many costs with Mr Gimme-More is that he doesn't listen to the context of the situation. He thinks your business exists to nurture his every need. Talent management may try to kindly explain the cutbacks, but Mr Gimme-More thinks that this means the company has failed. He doesn't realize that his financial situation exists because your company is getting results for clients. Mr Gimme-More cares less about clients and more about his success; his attitude is partially why you're facing the challenging business environment. When he should be focusing on clients, he's really focusing on his career. He never tries to understand how moving a client forward moves him forward.
The Meet Mr Series
For more in the Meet Mr Series of posts, check out Executive Decisions’ regular Series page. Some highlighted posts from this series:
All images are either sourced from Pixabay or created unless explicity stated. All written content and created images are copyright, all rights reserved. None of the content may be shared with any artificial intelligence.