Hey, did you hear the news about LeBron? In case you missed it ‘The Chosen One’ made ‘The Decision’ to leave his team of seven years, the Cleveland Cavaliers, to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and nine guys that look like Tim Sackett on the Miami Heat.
This was huge news in the world of sports. Having the generally regarded best player in the league, (James), flanked by one of the top five (Wade), and top ten (Bosh), players in the game sets the Heat up for the next five years or so, and most observers expect the dynamic trio to produce a string of championships.
The Heat fans, caught up in the excitement and anticipation for a fantastic year, quickly snatched up all the available season tickets for the upcoming 2010-2011 season, making a ticket to a Heat game, pretty much the hottest thing going on South Beach.
Awesome times for the Heat franchise, the players, their fans, and the team employees. The best player, the King, joins the club, all the tickets are sold, merchandise is flying off the shelves, and everybody is dying to be courtside this year to see James, Wade, and Bosh beat the Knicks by 40 points.
Yep, good news all around. Except of course if your job as a Heat employee was to sell season and corporate tickets. You know, the tickets that were all bought up in about five minutes after ‘The Decision’ was announced. The tickets that just a few months ago you were beating the bushes, working the CRM system, and dreaming up two-for-one and ‘free tacos if we score 100 points’ schemes to try and move sales. If that was your job, better start looking for a new gig since – ‘With Heat season tickets sold out, team fires season sales staff’.
You read that right, soon after the monumental good fortune of landing James (and Bosh), riding a wave of unparalleled interest and excitement, and selling all of their available season tickets, the Heat helped share the good fortune around the organization by sacking about 30 of their sales staff. While this mass firing could be interpreted as being kind of cold and a bit heartless, when you consider reality that the Heat ‘can sell tickets without really trying’. One fired staffer noted – “They let us go because there was really nothing left to do anymore.”
In reality, the firing of the season ticket sales staff is representative of any major external force that can without warning irreparably change one’s value and position in an organization. It could be a merger with another company, the sudden divestiture of a division or a product line, or the implementation of a technology solution making you and your skills suddenly expendable.
Should the Heat have done more to try and retain these workers? Should they have developed the employees beyond their narrowly defined roles as ‘season ticket sellers’, and into more diverse ‘entertainment consultants?’ Maybe.
But if you only bring one thing to the table, even if that one thing is today critical to the success of the organization, that does not mean it will always be a critical skill. Maybe these sales employees got complacent, and in their traditional view, selling season tickets was an absolutely essential organizational function - top line baby! No matter how bad things would get for the organization, people that drive the top line would be the safest, right?
And it would have been. Until, of course, the King came to town, and did their jobs for them, and better than them. Without even trying.
All this shows a very short-sighted view of the people in the organization. It also is yet another example that one needs to look out for one’s career: passion or loyalty to the company (or the Miami Heat) be damned.
Which is all unfortunate. People WANT to belong to something bigger and believe they are making a difference. But as soon as you do, boom, the external factor comes along and you are out the door. Questions your loyalty and engagement, doesn’t it?
I totally agree Scot – bailing on employees at the first sign of trouble is a bad precedent, bailing on them in a time of unprecedented success is probably worse.
Obviously this is not a positive story and probably could have been handled better. However, I think the point that is being missed in all of the stories and commentary that I have seen or heard at this point is that this is not about the 2010-2011 ticket sales. With the players contracts in place this is a guaranteed 5 year period where ticket sales will take care of themselves. How many businesses would say, although you probably will not be needed for the next 5 years, we are going to keep all of you around?