What Circuit City Taught Me About How Not To Succeed In Business: Part 2
This is the second part of the blog post on some things I learned about business and leadership from my tenure as a "Sales Counsellor" at Circuit City (R.I.P.) 6. Train Managers to Inspire, Not To Conspire CC managers were about as inspiring as an old shoe. They were trained for one specific purpose: to maximize profits. We held them in fairly low esteem because not many of them could sell water to a man dying of thirst. And even the ones who could, quickly became drones trying to keep their jobs and bonuses. They seemed to conspire against us---making sure that we lived in the same kind of fear they were living in---rather than inspire us to greatness. First of all, your business should not create toxic and ineffective managers. The way you treat you mid-level staff is probably the way they will treat your front-line employees. Secondly, there is always a fair amount of junk that managers will have to deal with that they sh...
