Beware People Who Take Work Personally
This force multiplier can take you down...or be your secret weapon
In the massively multiplayer game of work, you’ll find many people pursuing different goals using a combination of strategies. Once in a while, you’ll encounter a fellow player who takes the game personally.
Most of us have been advised not to “take it personally”—usually when someone or something has not gone our way. It’s easy to say but hard to turn off strong, personal feelings when business and life combine. Early in my career, I saw how a single person could use their passion to stop a giant product launch in its tracks.
It’s a strategy that you must be wary of in your career—but it may be an edge you can employ to win against the odds.
Innovation in the Product Aisle
It’s spring 2000, and I’m a first-year Assistant Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer products company—which is known for creating new categories such as toothpaste, shampoo, and laundry detergent. I’m the lowest-ranking person in a room where my new business team is trying to convince a group of produce industry leaders that our latest effort at category creation won’t ruin their lives.
Our new business R&D team was charged with finding problems that a novel cleaning product could solve. One day they looked at the produce aisle and realized: (1) lots of people worry about the stuff on their fruits and vegetables, and (2) there’s no great way to clean them, so most people rinse them in water alone and hope for the best. They spent years creating an innovative soap with all-natural ingredients like baking soda and grapefruit oil.
As a hire out of business school, I won the lottery by getting an assignment on the new business team, where the peers to my left were celebrating the rocket-like trajectory of Febreze, and those on the right were working overtime to keep up with orders of our latest success, Swiffer. I was assigned to Fit Fruit & Vegetable Wash, which everyone up to our CEO expected to be the third new category home run in a row.
One of my many roles was to maximize our retail distribution. And as we learned in 5 years of a test market, nothing was more important than getting Fit placed in the produce section of grocery stores. This is where people would expect to find it, and sales here were 4-times higher than our backup spot in the dish soap aisle.
But the produce industry hated us.
From the first day of our test market, we received angry letters and phone calls from growers’ associations. They worried that the marketing muscle of Procter & Gamble would barrage consumers with scary messages about the dangers of unwashed produce in order to establish our new business. They called out the apple on our logo and PR quotes like “we get greens squeaky clean.”
The problem was that these growers had strong, long-term relationships with produce buyers at the major grocery chains. So, in addition to their direct complaints to us, as we geared up for our national launch, they filled their produce buyers’ inboxes with warnings about how Fit would hurt their total sales. Therefore, the chance of getting a spot in the fruit & vegetable section was looking rough. And without this placement, our launch would likely be dead on arrival.
So with a lot of help from experts and intermediaries, it’s Saturday morning at a big annual industry event, and we’re in a room with people who hate us. We’ve got two hours to convince them that we’re part of a solution and not a problem.
Our R&D scientists perform live demos that show how much dirt Fit removes—and how much better their produce looks—compared with water alone. We show test market data about how stores’ produce sales actually rose when Fit was stocked. And we preview our launch advertising, which we watered down quite a bit to help assuage their fears. I earnestly present the rest of our marketing plan and advertising, which has a theme of “bring out the best” in your produce.
As the meeting proceeds, I feel like we’re making progress. They haven’t left the room, folded arms are loosening up, and there’s even a nod of affirmation here and there. I’m imagining some high-fives over cocktails as my one, two, and three-up managers and I celebrate dodging a bullet.
Then one of the produce industry representatives—a woman who owns grape, apple, and broccoli farms in California—suddenly interrupts my presentation:
“The real problem is not the fruit. It’s the germs on everyone's hands at home. What we need to do is get everybody to wash their hands. And I don’t see HOW this will increase produce consumption—you’re just increasing the fear. I think the heads of our industry have been too easy on your guys, and I’m going to rally them, and we’re going to fight you.”
Things got quiet..and awkward. My GM replies with a polite and sensitive response, but it’s clear that the meeting is over.
The industry reps clear out of the conference room, but one of the large produce buyers stays behind. He shares something that knocks new sense into me:
“Look, these people represent individual farmers who have been struggling through ups and downs for generations. Back in the 80s, there was a scare about a pesticide called Alar that was commonly used on apples. The science is a bit mixed, but the reaction was immediate—grocery stores pulled apples off shelves, and schools stopped buying apples. It hurt their businesses, and these farmers had to pull their kids out of college because they could no longer afford it. It’s very personal for them. I work with them every day, selling over $1 billion in fruits and vegetables each year. I like your product and believe people would like it as an option, but it’s not worth the fight.”
There are no high-fives in the bar that night. We don’t admit failure yet, but it could come eventually for this (and many other reasons). In this situation, a big business opportunity from the world’s largest CPG company was stopped by a handful of passionate farmers who cared much more than we did.
(Check out this link to see our launch TV commercial. Were we off-base or not? Share your thoughts in the comments below!)
The Power of a Force Multiplier
In war strategy, there’s the concept of a Force Multiplier. This is when two armies meet, but one has an “unfair advantage” that allows for victory—even for a smaller-sized force. This could be a technological advantage (like repeating rifles) or an organizational advantage (like a Roman Legion).
But many kinds of force multipliers are purely mental. For example, an army will fight harder when its back is against water (there is no chance of retreat) or when it is fighting on its own land (to protect its families).
In the business world, people who take their job personally have a force multiplier on their side. They may fear for their jobs and the ability to support their families. Or they may feel that their work is a meaningful quest to make a personal, positive dent in the universe.
This is one of the main reasons why small startups continue to disrupt industry giants with 1,000x more resources. Entrepreneurs take their jobs personally. Most are on a mission, and many have maxed out their credit cards. The business is their baby, and they cannot accept a loss. They will work all night and invent novel ways to win while their corporate counterparts leave their laptops at the office over the weekend.
You Can Take it Personally to Win
Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, you can succeed in whatever you set your mind to by taking it more personally. Turn your job into a meaningful mission, rally your team to do something big together, and pick a giant competitor you want to crush.
In a corporate job, remember that moving up the ladder means standing out from your peers—and if you can bring personal passion to the table, you’ll see more success and stand out as a leader among people who are mostly looking to check boxes.
When you’re on a personal mission, your customers sense it and are more likely to support you. You’ll attract people to your team that wants to be a part of something big. And you’ll look at competitive claims and challenges as bulletin board material to further power your campaign.
But don’t take it too far…
Taking it personally can be an effective strategy, but it can have a dark side. Religious belief can become zealotry. Patriotism can become jingoism. Your laser focus on the higher purpose can blind you to the reality of your market and the wider world. Extreme belief can lead us to see anyone who disagrees as an enemy—including when our own employees raise alarms. And the news is full of stories of passionate entrepreneurs who weaved lies and ruined lives in their drive to improve the world.
The produce industry, for example, still hasn’t done enough to quell our fears about food safety. Nor has it taken responsibility for issues like its extreme water consumption in drought-prone geographies.
You can do amazing things in business when you put your mind and heart in the right place. But it’s OK to leave the laptop closed for the weekend now and then.
Bob Gilbreath is a 2x-exit entrepreneur and co-founder of Hearty, a curated matchmaking service that combines top software developers with early-stage, venture-backed startups.