Meet Mr Wait-What
The employee assessment of that employee who's never present in what he does
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 Wait-What. Mr Wait-What can be found confusing meetings with irrelevant comments that reflect he wasn't paying attention or staying 30 minutes on a call that already ended because he only joined to look at if he was present.
But first, a fictional story. Because I'm creating a fictional stories as examples in this series, I'll call Mr Wait-What in my story Kyle. As a reminder, our fictional company is ABCZ Corporation.
Story
BAM! George threw a stack of papers on a table at the front of the room. He had a PowerPoint presentation on the board behind him with the title, "What Happened?" He looked around the room and everyone could tell he was angry, except Kyle who kept glancing over at his phone. "I do not know what anyone was thinking with this campaign," George started. "This stack of documents," he started pointing directly to the stack he had thrown down on the table, "show that none of our customers were represented in our campaign. None of them." George looked around the room again, "Who's idea was it to use a campaign that doesn't remotely reflect the values of our customers?"
No one answered.
"Last year, all I heard from some of you was that psychographic marketing was dead," George said as his eyes darted at a few of the attendees in the room. "And all I heard was how it's all social media now. So you found some popular idiot on Instagram and decided we'll just use this guy to market our product!" He angrily pointed down to the stack of documents before starting, "and now our customers are angry and aren't buying our product. Heck, there's stores giving away our product for free and people aren't taking it!" He slammed his fist on the stack of papers while raising his voice, "and what angers me is that several no-name companies are starting to pick up our customers because they're using our campaign as evidence that we don't know who our customers are!"
"To be fair, we anticipated that influencers on Instagram would have more sway with the young audience," Jason started before immediately being interrupted.
"Listen Jason," George lashed out, "it cost our company twelve times the amount of money to gain a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. Twelve times! Does this pathetic marketing campaign factor in how many customers we'd lose out of outrage to how many we'd gain from its Instagram ad? No! Because it doesn't offset twelve multiples," George pointed again to the stack of papers. "The level of incompetence that this research shows that some of you are guilty of makes me wonder how any of you got into these positions in the first place!" George looked around the room and noticed that Kyle was looking at his phone, an observation he had noted when he started the meeting. "What about you Kyle - you were literally the one suggesting this Instagram influencer!"
"Wait, what?" Kyle asked as he looked around the room startled and could tell George was angry. He had no idea what was being discussed, but he could tell everyone was expecting him to say something. "Oh, uh Instagram influencers are the new way to market. I think our company has proven that we successfully know how to find influencers that we can use going forward," Kyle said hoping that what he said answered the question since all he could recall was the word influencer, so he imagined the meeting was about finding influencers.
"That makes absolutely no sense," George replied sharpening his tone. "You were the one that suggested this influencer and look at the result!"
"I know, that post got millions of views! Think about all we had to do was send the product for free," Kyle said enthusiastically, but noticed that many of the attendees were moving in their chair and looking away from him.
George looked at Kyle like he was a complete moron. He shook his head before pointing again to the stack of papers, "This shows that your idea failed across the board. Millions of views don't mean millions of dollars - people's attention doesn't mean business. Your campaign failed," George said with Kyle realizing the context of what the meeting covered. His idea to give free products to Instagram and TikTok influencers had unfortunately alienated some customers. Kyle imagined that only a few would be alienated, but that the company expected to get double the customers back. Unfortunately, this didn't happen.
"Yes, I mean we expected that we'd get double the customers from the ones we lost," Kyle started.
"And like I said earlier, unless it was over twelve to one, that was a terrible strategy," George interrupted. "So enough from you and your Instagram and TikTok ideas." He looked around the room at the others, "We need to review the research of these documents ASAP and create new material that captures how our audience thinks and feels." He paused for a bit while looking back at his PowerPoint presentation. "I'll be honest - one thing that I think happened here was no accountability." He looked around the room again, "you guys ran with a campaign but didn't have another set of eyes look at it. Did you ask people who have different perspectives about the ad? I don't think so. I sometimes get the feeling that you guys only ask questions to people who share your views and don't get other people's perspectives." He look at Kyle before asking, "For instance Kyle, what was the negative feedback about your campaign idea before you wanted us to run with it?"
"Uh, what?" Kyle asked looking up from his phone.
"Did you hear what I asked?"
"Uh no, sorry my partner texted me about an emergency," Kyle replied.
"I asked what was the negative feedback you received from your campaign idea?"
"None sir, everyone loved it," Kyle replied. "I err on the side of caution, so I assumed that we might offend some people but that we would make up for the loss of customers."
"I don't think you did any research or if you did, it was from your echo chamber," George said. "Since you have an emergency, you can leave. Plus, you're not adding any value being here anyway." With that George pointed to the door and Kyle arose from his chair and left.
Costs
In our fictional story, George noticed that Kyle wasn't aware of the downside of his campaign. A big part of this could be that Mr Wait-What isn't present in what he does. More than likely in this fictional story, Kyle was warned by others that his campaign might alienate customers. But in order for Kyle to consider this as an effect, he had to listen and be present. Kyle, like every Mr Wait-What, lacked presence and therefore didn't listen. Of course, it's also possible that Kyle didn't even consider another opinion because he wasn't present in his campaign to consider that all campaigns might have a downside and this should be considered. When considering the cost of Mr Wait-What, talent management should think about how his lack of presence affects all his work.
We also note in our fictional story that the meeting involved in-person attendance. If the meeting involved a virtual meeting, like Zoom, Kyle may not have even answered the questions from George. He might have been lingering on the call as if he was present, yet was pre-occupied with other things. Kyle was in the meeting, but not actually "in" the meeting. His mind centered on other distractions, like his phone, not the content being discussed. This is a pattern of Mr Wait-What: he attends meetings, but he's not there. He responds in meetings, but it seldom reflects an understanding of what is being discussed.
There is one warning I will give to companies about Mr Wait-What. If you think you have many of them, it's not only a talent management problem. This is an executive level problem that should be investigated.
The Meet Mr Series
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