ANTONY WATKINS – Tallahassee, FL, USA

In 2015, I was tasked with saving a company that had operated at a loss for nearly a decade. The ownership had decided to dissolve the company and liquidate its assets, but had given us 6 months to turn it around. I went to every employee, (the company consisted of about 100 people), and explained that we had to come up with every innovation we could to make the company profitable or we would all lose our jobs.

In part, due to my leadership, but mostly due to the people on the ground, we not only stopped the bleeding, but turned a million dollar gross profit in the last two quarters. The ownership was impressed and offered me the official title that reflected the work I had been doing. When I told them I would accept under one condition, that we use that year as a benchmark, and from that point forward, any growth in profits would be divided 50-50 stockholders and employees.

Then the chairman said the stockholders were owed all the profits as they had stood by the company through ten bad years. I asked him, how much the company was worth six months earlier. He admitted it had a negative value at that point. I said, that was what the stockholders had allowed the company to get to, that was what they were entitled to. That any growth had been on the initiative of the workers who had, in spite of the stockholders saved a bankrupt company.

He then changed tactics and said he had already given some of the most underpaid employees raises, but that beyond that, employees were not motivated by money. I asked why the stockholders were but workers were not? His answer was that stockholders were “investors”. I replied that the workers had literally invested their lives and livelihood in the company. He refused to show ownership, either through shares or through a 50-50 profit sharing plan.

I stayed on for another year and managed our marketing in support of another team member who accepted the leadership role I refused. The company has remained profitable since, but has not seen the remarkable growth I am certain would have been possible, if the ownership had respected the work of the employees.