Christopher Cabrera could almost hear the questions before they were even asked.
Xactly Corp. had just acquired Centive, a move which was going to result in a significant overlap in job responsibilities in the merged organization.
“So in this already challenging time where people are concerned and a little bit scared, we had this other event happen, which caused people to be even more concerned,” Cabrera says. “So we were very direct and very clear telling people what was going to happen. There was some overlap, and there would be some reduction in force as a result. But we didn’t let it linger on.”
Time will tell how this move ultimately affects the 150-employee provider of sales performance management services. But Cabrera’s ability to push the right buttons with Xactly’s culture helped it achieve an 87 percent increase in revenue from 2007 to 2008.
“If you have (employees’) hearts and minds, you can get through tougher times,” says the company’s founder, president and CEO.
Smart Business spoke with Cabrera about the keys to managing a healthy culture.
Don’t dwell on cuts. We’ve talked plain and simple and clear. We’ve laid out time frames. We’ve said, ‘These next two weeks, we’re going to decide where the overlaps are and we’re going to announce the cuts, and that’s going to be it.’
We stuck to our guns and to our time frame, and we communicated that.
Employees are part of and are sharing in the success or failure of the business. They’ll understand that times are tough, and in order to preserve the golden goose for tomorrow, we need to do something today that might be a little uncomfortable.
As long as you are direct and you share that with them, and whatever cuts you make are not disproportionately affecting the employees and not the executives, my experience has been they understand that.
If these cuts are adversely affecting your culture or core values, you’re going to find yourself in a death spiral and you’re going to kill the golden goose.
Set the stage. People who think leadership is about dictating a culture don’t understand culture. Culture is driven by the people below. It’s driven by the rank and file. All the leader can do is set the stage as to what collectively we think our values are.
Xactly One is a foundation that today has shares of stock in it and today drives a lot of corporate activities and events around philanthropic activities. We give of our time, and we do food drives and soup kitchens and every kind of thing we could imagine to help the communities.
Employees really like that because it ties into what I said about our core values. It’s not just, ‘Oh guys, we care about the community.’ We’re saying we care about the community through our actions, not because leadership is saying it’s important.
