That’s a whole lot of cutting and pasting to try and make the point that Cain didn’t turn around Godfather’s Pizza, and wasn’t a terribly remarkable CEO.
What’s missing from your voluminous post, are the profit and loss numbers that af_vet cited earlier. According to his research, the company was losing $8 Billion a year before Herman Cain took over.
He cut the number of restaurants, and brought the company back to life, achieving a $2 Billion dollar a year profit.
I haven’t gone looking myself, but I’m sure those numbers can be readily found on the net. I’ve now posted them to you twice. Are you going to say that Cain did not do what’s been claimed?
"Perry is brilliant (cept when he splains his self, or anything else), he invented all the jobs in Texas, plus he shoots coyotes when they are heartless."
If you can do that, all will be well.....
:-)
You will not likely get a serious or direct answer. Charles has a post history filled with thousand+ word rants that not so cleverly duck the issues and questions at hand. I recommend Freepers check that history for themselves.
He may lie, but his posts do not.
MILLION. (Sorry, I know you didn’t get my other correction).
He took a company with about 250 million in revenue and a one year msall loss of 8 million, and cut 25 million in revenut and acheived a 2 million profit. That’s a 10 million turnaround, or about 4% of revenues, achieved by cutting the stores with the lowest revenues and/or the highest costs.
But the idea that Godfathers was dying is an unproven assertion. It had a bad couple of years, after years of tremendous growth. That’s not surprising either, when you are trying to grow your company, there is a fine line where if you grow TOO quickly, you outpace your capabilities and end up with too many underpreforming assets.
If you really want to take a good measure of the company that doesn’t have to do with GROWING the company, look at the per-store margins (profits over expenses).
But don’t look for that information for Godfather’s pizza during the Cain years. It was a private company, and Cain has not released the information you would need to figure that out. Sorry. Almost everything about Godfather’s is somewhat inferential.
Again. Profit is a measure of success. But it is a bare one — growth without losses is the true measure of a successful company. Cain did not grow the business while he was in charge. He didn’t significantly expand the number of stores, he didn’t increase market share, he didn’t grow revenue.
Realise that this is a somewhat academic exercise. There is nothing about expanding stores, increasing market share, or growing revenue that has anything to do with leading the country, or commanding the armed forces. It’s an entirely different kind of leadership.
And you are free to look at the profit change and interpret that as being the mark of a great leader. You asked about my statement of 5th to 11th. I explained it in detail. If you want a different measure, I’d love to do that measure, but I can’t because we don’t have any independent information on profits.
Last thing, and then I’m going to stop harping on leadership here and go to bed. Godfather’s was growing at a phenomenal rate up until Pillsbury aquired it in a buyout. (Godfather’s was owned by a company Pillsbury purchased). It then had two bad years, and Pillsbury assigned one of their best turnaround people to it. Cain had fixed some real problems at the regional level with Burger King. They wanted to turn around Godfather’s, to get it back on that phenomenal growth pattern.
Two years later, Pillsbury abandoned Godfather’s, selling it at a loss to Cain and his group. And Godfather’s NEVER went back to that outstanding growth, and became mired in the middle of the pack, with around 500-800 stores, compared to the thousands owned by Pizza hut, Dominoes, and the other big 5. DUring that time, Papa Johns was an upstart that grew like wildfire, overtaking Godfather’s and vaulting to the number 4 position.
So I’ll ask two general questions, and leave you be. First: With hindsight, if you could go back to 1986 and invest $10,000 of your money in any pizza chain to take out in 1996, which one would you invest in, and how many would you choose over Godfather’s pizza?
And two: If you owned a struggling pizza franchise in 1996, and had your pick of ANY current pizza executive, would you have picked Herman Cain to run your company? How many other executives would you have tagged before Herman Cain?
I’m not asking you to give me an answer. You might just say Cain because you like him. I just want you to evaluate the companies, look at the balance sheets and growth and whatever you can find, and then try to answer that question honestly to yourself.
BTW, I am NOT rejecting Cain yet. And I’m certainly not rejecting him because I don’t think he did a good enough job at Godfather’s. I just don’t really think he did so fabulously that it matters to me when evaluating presidential leadership. I’ve SEEN corporate leaders who DID show presidential leadership, who created companies from scratch, who grew them when the market was crashing around them. That type of record is impressive enough to make up for not having any public executive experience.
Cain’s experience to me is great, because he will understand business. That is important. But I don’t think it shows me he can do the job as President.
Exactly or Cain could have done what any good liberal would do, plough even more non existent money into the company hoping to keep all them branches running the risk of sinking the whole ship.....
if he turned millions of dollars loss making company into a millions of dollars profit making company there is no other case to answer on the issue....
Any good businessman will tell you sometimes cuts need to be made for the stability of the company.......be it the small local shop or a multi national company......