Leading Matters episode #18 features Bullhorn CEO Art Papas.  We dive into the story behind Art’s radical transformation of the mission, culture, and purpose of his company.  A change that challenged their status quo, made some of the leadership team uneasy, and was fraught with uncertainty.   

The essence of leadership, according to Art Papas, is to come to the realization that you have to make a decision that is potentially unpopular, terrifying, and tests the status quo.  Art stared into the face of such uncertainty and took the challenge head on by asking his team to completely change how they were going about their business.  It was a radical moment for Bullhorn that could have failed miserably because the nature of the change that Art was asking for seemed to ask his leaders to care less about revenue growth and more about the customer experience.  Art was convinced that by placing the custom experience centric to everything they did the revenue would follow. 

He was right.

HIGHLIGHTS

On the Tyranny of Choice

Leadership is about making the decision, and then empowering your team to aggressively execute against that decision even if when they may initially question its merit.  This is not to suggest that leadership happens in a vacuum, but that the leader is the final voice in how we are to arrive at our desired destination.  Working hard to not to become enslaved by choice in an effort to please and persuade, but to evaluate choice so that the path is clearly defined and understood. 

Poisoning the Ground Water with A Bad Mission

Art is very candid about how he believes that Bullhorn lost their way for a bit.  He comically discusses how the initial vision of Bullhorn became simplified into a single phrase’ world domination’.  And no, that isn’t exactly a joke, the phrase started to show up in powerpoint presentations.  Something was amiss and Art equates it to a poisoning of the ground water.  It was dangerous to the health of the company’s future, and he knew he had to change it.

The Circle of Value by Focusing on an Incredible Customer Experience

To refresh the well of the Bullhorn mission Art insisted that the company focus on a single purpose; creating an incredible customer experience.  It was difficult to get started, but once the momentum began Bullhorn found that an incredible customer experience had impact on every area of Bullhorn’s business, including improved growth. 

The Impact to the Culture

Bullhorn began to elevate the performance of individual employees who delivered on the new mission.  This had a viral effect across the organization that would motivate the entire workforce to seek to achieve the personal career growth and opportunity that came along with delivering against the new mission.

On the Thirst for Purpose

Art explains that real employee engagement cannot happen unless the team feels connected to the purpose, and can understand how that purpose will allow them as individuals to (1) contribute to the greater good of the company (2) positively impact the customers that they are serving (3) visualize how their jobs are connected to the mission and (4) identify the natural opportunity for career progression.