Last week, Cabot Creamery recalled 1,700 pounds of their “extra creamy” premium sea-salted butter due to…wait for it…fecal contamination.
Now we know what gives it that creamy saltiness. Ugh. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
When I saw this story, I immediately imagined the CEO getting the e-mail to deliver the news about this and having a “You’ve GOT to be sh**ting” me moment. I wonder if he was p.o.’d or just shrugged it off and said, “Well…sh*t happens.” (This is just too easy, folks.)
To the point, if you’re trying to run and grow a company, I guarantee there will be moments where you are in utter disbelief about what is going on in YOUR company with YOUR people under YOUR leadership.
Stupid, sloppy, moronic mistakes that leave you stunned and asking, HOW did THIS happen? WHY did you think THAT was a good idea? What in the WORLD were you thinking when you decided to do THAT? Particularly since most of the “crap” will be tied to everyday jobs and routine tasks you do over and over again, done by highly compensated people who should KNOW better and should have been able to catch the mistake or avoid it altogether.
This is a big reason why a lot of companies don’t scale. They can’t get beyond the breaker of stupid in the workplace. Every day is two steps forward, three steps back. Problems, mistakesand even unforeseen setbacks don’t politely line up and wait their turn. They arrive on your doorstep in the middle of the night, drunk, banging on the door with a group of their malcontent friends, to destroy your home.
SOME of this – dare I say most of this – is our own fault. We hire people we shouldn’t hire, give them responsibility without oversight, don’t train them properly and fail to put controls in place. But when you’re running hot with a million things going on, it’s real easy to fall into this trap. And candidly, when you hire a guy to chop onions, it shouldn’t be a stretch to assume he knows what an onion is and how to work a knife – but over and over again, I’m caught off guard by people’s lack of knowledge and competence. Even HIGHLY PAID people who should know better.
In marketing, I’m often surprised by the advertising put out by bigger companies that arguably have the means to hire some of the best copywriters, best consultants and top marketing minds in the world – but the swath of waste and stupidity is epic. The Budweiser/Dylan Mulvaney fiasco comes to mind. More recently, Jaguar throwing away their iconic brand for what looks like a knockoff of Steve Job’s Apple campaign “Think Different,” saying to “Copy Nothing” while they copy Apple.
But more common is the intensely stupid day-to-day stuff that happens with your employees. I recently had a member come to me delighted because a sales rep from one of his competitors decided to send a group e-mail to all their clients and active prospects, but forgot to use the blind cc function. Somehow, he was on the list and had access to over 300 e-mail addresses. HOW could that happen in THIS day and age? But it does. All. The. Time.
Then there’s the sales prevention that lurks in every organization. The other day I made an emergency trip to Lowes to buy frost covers for my vegetable garden when the temperature was going to drop down to below 32 degrees that night.
I found a worker who was extremely helpful, taking me to the section he believed the covers were in. On the way, he asked another worker – who must have been from the “we hate customers” division – where they might be. Without acknowledging me, she said the manager of the garden department had tagged all of the covers for their own use that night, and there were none for sale. The first worker continued to the location he thought they were in, with her following along, I supposed, to stop me from buying anything. When we found there were none out on the shelf he took me to, she reiterated how she was right and there were none for sale.
Thankfully, he ignored her and walked me to another section. She followed, insisting the entire time that they didn’t have covers for sale to “the public.” In the end, we found a ground-cover blanket that would work just as well. He even helped me carry the rolls to the checkout, where I bought them and left.
So, what should Cabot do now? What should ANY of us do when an unbelievably STUPID mistake happens? You gotta dig in, find where the stupid is and, if necessary, fire it. You get what you tolerate. But there are times when EVERYTHING is on fire and you simply need to prioritize what fires you’re putting out and what you’re going to let burn, until you can get things back under control.
Remember, folks, this is why you get paid the big bucks. Your income and ultimately your wealth is directly linked to the amount of pain you are willing to endure; the size, scope and intensity of problems you’re willing to take on; and the piles upon piles of doo-doo butter you are willing to fight back against every day.
And trust me when I say the piles of doo-doo get bigger and stinkier in direct proportion to the size and scale of the factory you build.
If you’re sick of cleaning up messes you didn’t see coming – from clueless hires to sales-killing mistakes – then you need to be at The IT Sales And Marketing Boot Camp, happening April 24–26. This is where smart IT business owners go to learn how to tighten up operations, build a real marketing system and stop the endless cycle of putting out fires.
Click here and register now for FREE virtual access – and finally get control of the chaos.
