Consumer Products
Moving on
How to know when it's time to replace yourself
By Kristy J. O'Hara
Smart Business Chicago | March 2008
Cindy Melk
Founder and creative director, H2O Plus
When Cindy Melk realized
that she simply didn’t have enough time to do what it
would take to move H2O Plus
to the next level, she made a
big decision.
Instead of overextending herself and continuing to try to do
everything on her own, she did
what few entrepreneurs would
ever fathom doing and began
the search to replace herself
with a new CEO who could
grow her sea-derived skin care business. She reasoned that
doing so would allow her to
take over as creative director
and focus on the side of the
business that she excelled in
and enjoyed most.
When she thought she’d finally
found her person, she met with
him at least five times, for hours
at a time. And while that’s a lot
of time for a company’s founder
to spare, it gave her full confidence that she had found the
right person to take charge of
her 80-employee company.
Smart Business spoke with
Melk about how to hire people,
whether it’s for a newly created
position or for your own.
Know when to pass the reins. You
get to a point where you realize
your limitations. It’s not like all
of a sudden you stumble upon it.
You have your strategic objectives of where you want to take
your company, and if you’re fortunate, focused and have the
right team, you get there, and
then there’s the next step and
the next step and the next step
of growth. If your distribution is
growing like crazy, you have to
increase your manufacturing
capability. If that was the case,
you’d be bringing on somebody
who could embrace that. It’s different objectives to take the
business to the next level.
If we’re going to do this, what
would be the leadership skills to
get us there? There’s only so
much you can do in a day.
Know who you’re looking for. Sit
down with your management
and collectively understand what
the requirements are. When you
have your top-level management
— obviously, you’re all going to
interview this person that’s coming on board — making sure
whoever is involved is very clear
on what you’re looking for, so
we don’t all walk away differently with who this should be. It’s
defining the role and personalities and responsibilities and
accountabilities of what this person will be and with a large over-lying criteria of the cultural fit.
It’s going back to your cultural
values and saying, ‘I’m this type
of this leader, and what other
types of characteristics would be
beneficial for the existing team?’
Ask good questions. I like to do unconventional interviews. I want to
know the vibe of the human being as well as the experience, and
the only way that you learn that
and see if you’re compatible is by
spending time with that person.
Ask provocative questions and
tear things apart to get to the
core. You can learn a lot about
people by asking provocative
questions. What’s your favorite
color? Do you like dogs? Learn
about what’s important to them.
Say, ‘What are the other tactics
we could take? What are the
other alternatives? What would
be the completely nontraditional
way of doing this? What would
make this service better? What
would be the ultimate scenario?’
Leave the ego behind. Check
your ego at the door, and if
you’re smart, you’re going to hire
people that are better than you
and embrace that. You need an
ego to be a leader and have confidence, but you just don’t need
the negative aspects of an ego,
which is insecurity, pompousness — CEOs that are detached
or run their companies by having
their employees scared of them.
I’m supposedly a product
development expert, but there
are still things in the chemistry
process that somebody’s got to
break them down and explain
to me. I’m not a chemist. Really
embrace and have a trust in
these experts you bring in, and
then you build respect for each
other over time of what you
both bring to the party.
Seek out opportunities. They
don’t necessarily come along.
It’s the difference of being pro-active and reactive. It’s just like
anything else in life — you have
to go out and get what you want,
bottom line.
As dry as it sounds, the numbers will tell you where the big
opportunities are. As a creative,
that aggravates me, but it’s an
absolute reality. Usually when
industry trends and statistics are
down, they almost inevitably
bring about a new opportunity
for something somewhere else.
Think outside of the box. It’s focusing on, ‘Yes, that’s the way everybody’s traditionally done that,
but is there a more interesting
way?’ Why do all skin care
creams have to be white? Can’t
we develop an as effective moisturizer that looks different than
everything in the market?
It’s just tearing everything
down, ripping it up and throwing it up in the air. There’s
something to be said about a
good combination (of) stable traditionalism and some wild-card, entrepreneurial thinking.
Thinking out of the box is also
bringing inspiration. It’s looking
at other industries and not being
so pigeonholed into your own
industry. It’s encouraging people
to spend time in stores and see
what it takes to run a store and
what it feels like to be a customer in our stores. And what
can we do better? What are people doing?
A lot of times, we’ll send creative groups out for fact-finding
missions and say, ‘Bring back 10
phenomenal ideas in this area,’
and then you come together and
share this market review. It’s
exciting and makes you think of
your business in different ways.
HOW TO REACH: H2O Plus, (800) 242-2284 or www.h20plus.com
