know that he’ d put his job at risk. Dinner that night was emotional as Jim laid out the events of the past two months. He even gave Ruth a hard copy of the PowerPoint presentation he’ d made to Buchanan and Brocaw.
Ruth wisely bypassed commenting on the strategic errors that had put Jim in this position, concentrating instead on helping her husband to evaluate his current situation.“ Honey, your arguments are very strong and I think you are right. The problem is that you demolished the logic Buchanan used when he created the current sales force structure, and you did it in front of his new sales manager, so you are not going to be on Buchanan’ s or Brocaw’ s good side. As a matter of fact, there’ s a quote in a book that all the managers in my department have been reading that says,‘ Many managers want things to change, but only if they need not themselves do very much
1 very differently.’ What you are talking about doing is very rational and very forward-thinking, but that kind of change in a corporate culture would be very difficult to accomplish, even with the complete support of management. This may fall into the category of you were completely right, and as a result of being completely right, you are completely out of luck.”
Jim picked up the book and riffled through the pages, noting that Ruth had highlighted about 50 passages.“ I’ m done with that book now, honey,” Ruth said.“ If you want to read it you can take your time.”
The next morning, just as Jim expected, he was called into Ernie’ s office.“ Jim, your numbers and call history are pretty sorry looking. I’ m going to need a plan from you by the end of the week to show me how you are going to turn this around.”
Jim thought to himself,“ I won’ t turn anything around if I spend a week working on a sales plan,” but he only said,“ I’ ve got a full week of sales appointments already made— any chance I could get a little more time?”
“ Jim, there is nothing more important to your continued employment than convincing me that you can turn this situation around. If I were you I would cancel those appointments and do an outstanding job on that report. Quite frankly, I can see how a guy with such poor numbers would have been pushing for salary instead of commission, but there isn’ t going to be any free riding here— so get on it.”
Jim heard the words, which he translated to mean,“ I have already decided to fire you, but I need to document that I gave you a reasonable chance to bring your numbers back up before I can let you go.” Jim cancelled his appointments, spent part of the week working on the report and the rest looking for a new job.
Even though he’ d spent most of the week writing reports for Brocaw and polishing his résumé, Jim had found time to finish Ruth’ s copy of Pfeffer’ s book. Although it was not sales-specific, the book supported Jim’ s position. He also spent a lot of time playing and replaying in his head the presentation he and Harold had made to Buchanan, wondering how it could have been made more convincing.