That time I made a decision and half my company immediately hated me

“Uh, yeah, I think you’re right,” my colleague said. “Seems like an entire section of this company pretty much hates you right now.”

I had sensed something recently, some kind of negative energy toward me in the office. And I had asked one of the leaders in my company (Spunlogic) what the deal was.

He continued, “It seems like the main people who are upset with you are in both corners of the office.” If you think of our office layout as an L, my office (this is back when I had a personal office, which I will never have again) was in the corner of the L, and he was pointing to both far ends. Those ends housed two teams, each focused on very large clients, so they acted a bit more entrepreneurial than the rest of the company.

This feeling was so odd, because more than anything I prided myself on being a reasonable, understanding boss. We had grown to about 60 people and we had recently come back from our annual cruise, and I simply couldn’t imagine what I had done to upset people…

Let’s step back a minute.

I know a thing or two about vending machines. I know how they work, how to stock them, how the negotiations work to put them in buildings, how to clean them, and even just a little about how to fix them.

I know a thing or two about vending machines because as a young man I worked many times with my father on his vending route. I even wrote about that recently, explaining how the first day I ran a route with my dad was the hardest day I’ve ever worked, and he did that every day. More here.

So when I decided to have a vending machine put into our office on the 17th floor of the Promenade building in midtown, Atlanta, I knew it would work. Why wouldn’t it work, you ask? For a vending machine to be worth the time for the vendor to come and service it, and for product to be purchased before it goes bad, you need enough sales volume. Essentially, you need enough people making purchases in order for a vending machine to make sense for both the buyer and the seller.

With over 50 people, a vending machine usually makes sense. And being on the 17th floor I knew it would be much more convenient to grab a drink from the vending machine than it would be to go all the way downstairs to the cafe.

So I talked to my dad’s company and they set up the machine (a beautiful Coke machine). A guy would come every two weeks and refill it, and my team would be well hydrated and caffeinated.

And it worked…for a few months. Like clockwork, the vending guy would come, service the machine, tell me things looked great, and I’d see him two weeks later. But then a few months in he asked me if we had reduced our staff. In fact, I explained, we had added a few people. I asked why and he said that it seemed like there was less product being purchased. I made up an excuse of why that might be happening (I think there had been a holiday on Monday or something) and thought nothing of it.

Two weeks later I received a knock on my office door. It was the vending guy, and he said that actually there was even less product sold than the time before, and the volume had dropped so much that he wasn’t sure how much longer the machine would be viable.

I couldn’t understand why this would be the case. I walked the office and sure enough, there were Coke products on many of the desks, enough so that I was sure that people must still be buying from the vending machine.

And then I saw it. In the far corner of the office there was a mini-fridge. It was stocked with sodas. I asked one of the team members and they happily shared with me that once the vending machine was in the office and they realized they were paying $.50 for a Coke, and if they bought a mini-fridge and started buying in bulk from Costco that they’d save a lot of money.

Indeed.

I kept walking around the office and then I saw another mini-fridge! This one was in the other corner of the office, and when I asked about it they said the exact same thing. Both of these teams worked in areas of the office where they were all together due to the size of their accounts. The rest of the office wouldn’t have had a convenient place to put a mini-fridge, so they were the ones still using the vending machine.

Later that week I met with the leadership team and I told them that essentially we either needed to get rid of the mini-fridges, or get rid of the vending machines. If we let the mini-fridges stay, then only half our staff would have access to drinks. Yes, the mini-fridgers would have to pay a little more, but it felt like the decision was obvious to me.

So I asked the leaders over those two teams to tell them that the mini-fridges had to go. I did not, however, make sure to say “and explain to them why this is happening.” Well, you know what happens when we assume things…

A few weeks went by and everything seemed to be fine. The mini-fridges were gone, the vending guy was happy, and yet…I was getting that feeling. Something was “off”, and “off” in my direction. I decided to see if I could figure it out at our next town hall.

And so it was that the entire company was together when I learned what was really happening. Toward the end of the meeting I opened the floor up to anyone to ask a question or share their perspective. Finally someone raised their hand and said, “It just feels like we’re getting very corporate around here. There are new rules that I feel like ‘management’ is putting in place and you guys really don’t care what our opinion is anymore.”

This was shocking to me for many reasons, but it was also the first time I had been referred to as ‘management’. I asked her to give me an example.

“Well, for instance when you guys decided for no reason that we had to get rid of our mini-fridges because it didn’t look good, that just doesn’t feel like us.”

I was now even more stunned. That was why she (and likely everyone) thought we took out the mini-fridges?!

I then told her that I could see why it might have felt that we made that decision arbitrarily, but in fact there was a real reason we did it. After explaining the reason, I could see that the team started to relax. I told them that next time they are confused by a decision, to please come and ask me or their manager to see what the real reason was behind it, and I would do my best to make sure to communicate better.

Then the entire company brainstormed on how to solve the problem. We ended up deciding to keep the vending machine but lower the price to a more affordable rate, with Spunlogic eating that cost.

The lesson

It doesn’t matter how smart a decision is, if you’re making it on behalf of other people, you have to do a good job communicating to the people it is affecting. Communication builds trust, and trust is what makes any team work.

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