In Blog #178 in November, I wrote about JCPenney's new CEO Ron Johnson and his attempts at revitalization of the chain. "I hope the board gives Johnson enough time for his efforts to have a chance," I wrote.
They didn't.
After just 17 months on the job, he was fired. What is worse (in my opinion) is that to replace him they brought back the former CEO Mike Ullman! If Ullman was so great, why did they need Johnson to get JCP out of a mess in the first place?
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Ron Johnson's downfall wasn't necessarily due to his vision for J.C.Penney, but in the way it was executed, say retail analysts and industry experts." The sense is that he went too far, too fast, and should have experimented with the new pricing and boutique concepts before trying to implement them nationwide.
I think that if he would have done that, the same analysts would have said that he was moving too slow; that he needed to act quickly to transform the entire chain rather than doing it piecemeal. In short, it is hard to win when you are a change agent.
The one who has the strongest shield against criticism is now Mike Ullman. If something works, he is a genius. If it falls apart or the chain closes, it certainly is because of the mess that Ron Johnson made. He's a lot less vulnerable than when he left the post in 2011.
Once again, I applaud Johnson for trying to do something bold. I'm sure if he had to do it all over again, he would do things differently, but I hope that he would still have taken the job.
If you find yourself faced with a Herculean task, you need to get buy-in for both the idea and the execution plan. Don't go it alone, but do go. We need leaders willing to take risks to make things better for all of us.
-- beth triplett
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@leadershipdots
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Wall Street Journal, 4/10/13 p. 2B
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