Business Improvisation

I came across this article from The Salt Lake Tribune that is so bizarre that I had to share it with you.

“In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.””

“A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.

Christopherson led the sales team to the top of a hill near the office and told Hudgens to lie down with his head downhill, the suit claims. Christopherson then told the rest of the team to hold Hudgens by the arms and legs.

Christopherson poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens’ mouth and nostrils – like the interrogation strategy known as “waterboarding” – and told the team members to hold Hudgens down as he struggled, the suit alleges.

At the conclusion of his abusive demonstration, Christopherson told the team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as Chad had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded,” the suit alleges. “

Amazing. Apparently senior management, including President Dave Ellis, had seen the mustaches and paddles and were fine with it all.

“Ellis said the exercise was a dramatization of a story in which a young man asks Socrates to become his teacher. Socrates responds by plunging the student’s head underwater and telling him he will learn once his desire for knowledge is as great as his desire to breathe.

“It’s voluntary, it’s humorous, it’s team and camaraderie-building,” Ellis said.”

I have managed and sold in some very high pressure environments, achieve your numbers or lose your job, but I have to admit that I’ve never been physically tortured. Although I have sat through PowerPoint presentations and compensation reviews that I’m convinced constituted psychological torture.

Other than the obvious, torture is not a motivator and don’t hire psychopaths, there is a significant lesson we can learn from this display of corporate culture out of control. As a leader, you are responsible for culture. Why would the other sales people put up with these acts? Because even if management didn’t know about these events it was assumed they did, it is part of the corporate culture they’ve created. Culture is what’s going on when you’re not looking. I doubt that Prosper Inc founders Ethan Willis and Randy Garn designed or condoned these actions, but they are responsible.

The other thing that bothers me is that Prosper is in the business of coaching and motivation, they should know better. Ernst & Young named them Utah Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005. Is the message of corporate ethics not getting through? We do expect our leaders to practice what they preach.

“Physician heal thyself” – or – start bidding on the motivational training contracts in Iraq for the US Government.

Your thoughts?