Chapter Thirty-one
“I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back.”
—Philips Brooks
Every decision we make says something about who we are and what we value. But what do you do when all the options you must choose between make you sick to your stomach? Is there really such a thing as a lesser of two evils?
I found myself in that very position halfway through the first week of our programs one summer at Practice Makes Perfect. In the weeks leading up to the first day of our programs, our team had enrolled kids to fill 96 percent of the potential seats we had across the city. On day one, only about 70 percent of the kids showed up. To make matters worse, the attrition was concentrated across 20 percent of our sites, meaning there were classes where my team expected fifty students and only ten were present on the first day.
Our team tried not to panic. Again, it was just the first day of the program. Maybe they would show up tomorrow. Instead of spending time reflecting on why this could be, we spent the first day making calls to the kids who did not show up. By the end of the day, we knew we were in a bad place. The kids who had not shown up were not going to show up. What we didn’t realize was that many of our parents were indifferent to what programs their kids were enrolled in and simply signed them up for multiple programs that ran at the same time. Many of our families had signed up for the programs in March and April, and with very little contact from us leading up to the first day of the program, they decided on another set of plans.
We bill our schools on a per class basis. While we share in the responsibility of making sure the kids are enrolled in the programs, we take full ownership over the heavy lifting that involves hiring, onboarding, and training the staff. We delivered on our part. However, something didn’t feel right about billing a school for two classes’ worth of kids when they only had half of a class’s worth of kids show up. To make matters worse, it cost us $25,000 per day to keep everyone on payroll during the summer. We were employing over 300 people across New York City. This was when things got tricky.
By the end of the day on Tuesday, we realized there was no way to bring the enrollment levels up at some of our partner schools, which put us in one of the toughest places we’ve ever been in. Do we bill our partners the full cost of the programs even though their programs were not completely enrolled? Do we refund their money and break our promise to our staff by laying them off?
We considered every possibility, including imagining new services we could provide to the schools to ameliorate the situation, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of a bait-and-switch. If the schools decided they wanted to repurpose the funds for other services we could offer, then that would be fine. But I couldn’t force them into ancillary services.
By day three, we realized there was no straightforward way out of this position. Everyone was on edge, and a decision had to be made quickly if we were going to alleviate any small part of this catastrophe.
What I didn’t recognize while I was in college was that the same skill set I was using to choose between two good decisions was the same skill set I would need to rely on when I had to choose between two tough decisions. Again, I needed to understand my values and allow my values to drive my decisions.
I couldn’t get over how hypocritical I would be if we kept all the staff and didn’t credit or refund the schools their money. But laying off some of the seasonal help would betray the trust we had built with these individuals. Both decisions felt incredibly wrong. I learned what it felt like to have to lead in times of making tough decisions.
I made the decision that aligned most with my values. I told the team we were going to move forward with layoffs that would affect up to 10 percent of our seasonal staff. The message would be communicated before the end of the week, and I would personally deliver the news to those who were affected, and later update the entire organization. We would return almost a quarter million dollars, making us a company that I could at least be proud of when I was speaking to our school partners.
My business development manager and I reached out to our impacted partners and shared the news. Most of our partners were grateful and impressed that we would act in such a way. But there was one that was not so happy that we were going to break our promises to our seasonal staff. While it was unexpected, it reminded me that we have a responsibility to the tax payers who ultimately fund our schools.
Our teammates on the recruitment team were tasked with identifying the seasonal staff who would be least impacted by the layoffs (i.e., people who hadn’t moved out of state, didn’t communicate financial hardship, and weren’t dependent on this experience to get their next job). We chose to ignore teaching ability because we believed if you were selected out of a pool of 1,200 applicants, you were equally qualified to help us execute on our mission. A few other people on our team were tasked with finding alternative placements at other organizations for the people who were being laid off, creating opportunities for them to volunteer with our team or with other nonprofit partners, and thinking through how we might give them preferential treatment for future internships if they were willing to trust us again. The process was far from perfect, but, in hindsight, I am incredibly proud of how our team handled the situation.
That Friday, morale was at an all-time low. Some people cried. Others made it clear they never wanted to see my guts again. I couldn’t blame them. This was a breakdown in execution. Ultimately, I was responsible. People had committed themselves to our organization because of the vision I had laid out, and I let them down.
It took weeks before morale within our entire company returned to where it was right before the summer. Despite the ugly that came with the start of summer 2017, there were a lot of bright spots, including the growth our kids made and how satisfied many of our partners were. Since then, we’ve continued to think through safeguards, including a cash reserve to absorb such a loss without ever having to lay off another seasonal employee again and an added program guarantee that all of our classes will have a minimum of fifteen students in them. Like with all of our guarantees, we will offer participants the program the following year for half the price if we fail to deliver. This brings us one step closer to reducing the risk associated with partnering with us, to try something new, and to being a true partner who only succeeds when our partners succeed.
Hopefully, we’ll never find ourselves choosing between these two poor decisions again. While we may have lost some credibility with our seasonal staff in the short run, we hope that we’ve modeled how all companies should act in the education space to responsibly use tax-payer dollars, regardless of nonprofit or for-profit legal structure. Unfortunately, we can’t eliminate the possibility of having to choose between two equally bad decisions in the future. Next time, however, I’ll be far more prepared because of my deeper understanding of why I set out to do this work and the clarity I have around my values that are at the core of how I operate.