Your blog post – responsible leaders and bad news – reminded me of an interview I heard a while back. Someone was interviewing Tom Hoobyar, founding CEO of ASEPCO. Joe is an amazing entrepreneur and his company is equally successful. In case you don’t know, ASEPCO designs and manufactures high-tech valves primarily for the pharmaceutical industry (but also for any high-purity process). There’s zero tolerance for mistakes here because if a valve fails and a “mix” is contaminated it could cost human lives. His company is so good at what they do they have about 90% of this market.

Anyway, early in the interview this is what Tom Hoobyar – successful business leader, founding CEO and entrepreneur – has to say about bad news:

“If there was news I didn’t want to hear, it was
probably going to be useful to me. The stuff I least
like to hear – once I got over being angry about it or
embarrassed by it – has generally proved useful to me.”

I have the recording of this interview; that’s an accurate quote. So he recognizes the “value of bad news.” He recognizes that out of the darkness of frustration comes progress and growth.

Later in this same interview, Tom Hoobyar said that in order to develop a team sharp enough to repeatedly win quality awards and to capture 90% of the pharmaceutical market, he has also had to deliver bad news. He has had to fire a lot of people.

Yet he values people so much that he consistently gets feedback that AFTER being fired, people feel so good about how it was handled that they don’t have any animosity. They scarcely feel like they’ve been fired. They realize this is the best thing for them too and they leave on great terms.

Unfortunately he didn’t elaborate on exactly how he did it. But I think this is a great example from a terrific leader in a very demanding industry that bad news can be delivered nicely and with consideration.

Karen