1-800-Flowers CEO fires himself

The WSJ reported this week that 1-800-Flowers CEO Jim McCann plans to fire himself. The news caused me to sit back and remember my first professional job. 1-800-Flowers was one of our largest customers.

I worked at a fast-growing entrepreneurial company in the Boston area. We were #16 on the Inc 500 fastest growing companies in that year… exciting times. And yes, I actually started in the mailroom. But now I was in member services, helping take care of our customers, learning about business, learning about building working relationships that endure.

1-800-Flowers was an innovator. I was young and intrigued just by their name! I thought it was smart and memorable, embedding their value proposition, and even getting top spot in every alpha-sorted list. Jim McCann was at the top, a mail-order luminary.

Strategy & Operations challenges

The 1-800 value prop didn’t endure through the rise of online platforms. They were no longer just in the mail-order business. FTD Flowers similarly struggled through this industry dynamic, emerging from bankruptcy in 2019 after a $480M acquisition challenge. And they were the original low-tech ‘platform’ for florists.

For both 1-800-Flowers and FTD their challenges were not only strategic.

McCann reported this week that “self-inflicted problems with some back-end product ordering technology” was a key reason for their drop in sales. That’s an operations issue.

Charlie Cole, who now leads the company that bought FTD, reported on their progress in 2022. The article in Modern Retail states:

“What followed was nearly two years of fixing the company’s “nuts and bolts,” Cole said, before the company could implement a refreshed business strategy.” He continued, “Most of the problems from coming out of bankruptcy were caused by us — or caused by bad systems, caused by bad handoffs or caused by bad information being sent to members. And so the number one challenge we had was fixing that.” https://www.modernretail.co/operations/how-floral-delivery-company-ftd-revamped-its-operations-following-bankruptcy/

Our head of Human Resources at Verizon challenged senior leaders with a thought experiment: “You’re Fired” She then paused for effect. And she then announced “OK, it’s tomorrow. You’ve been re-hired into the same role. No baggage. Just opportunity. Figure out what needs to be done.”