Kunowledge

An odd confluence of events occurred recently to cause me to go from managing an English school one month to being unemployed the next. Yes that’s right, I’ve been laid off as of Wed April 8th complete with a “I regret to inform you” letter and last paycheck.  No pity necessary; I went surfing the next day.  If you’re interested in the details, continue reading.  (remember: I’m a plumber and plumbers can’t lie – everything told is as transparent and honest as possible).

Click for a larger view

If you remember correctly, I started my Teacher to Manager post with the same first 7 words as this post.  I also concluded the first paragraph with, “at the last minute, I was tossed into the position.”  This could have been the foreshadowing for the present situation.  Being “tossed” into a management role is significantly different from being promoted to a management role.

The basic explanation from the boss was that he “couldn’t afford me” due to tight economic conditions.  I listened carefully and heard not a negative thing said about me other than that I didn’t live up to the admittedly high expectations he had of me.  Truly, this was it.  “Maybe it was just bad timing for you,” he quipped as he admitted that if the number of students weren’t so low that I would have “more cushion” to make things better.  But he just doesn’t “have the luxury of time.”  Apparently he was hoping I would be an amazing “salesman” and magically entice +10 students to join our school.  In normal conditions, this might be possible.  In the given conditions, quite the opposite.  Yes, he used the word “salesman.”  Not once did he say I was a poor “manager,” poor “employee,” horrible person, or thief.  Only a poor salesman.  You’re fired.  Queue surprise and confusion.  Let me explain:

Basically, the previous management had taken the school’s numbers from over 100 students to 60 students in the course of 4 months.  As of March 1 (the beginning of a new session), I took over.  Literally the school was on a downward spiral.  The numbers had consistently been dropping since November of 2008… NOVEMBER!  Naturally, I expected the numbers to continue to dip (a little) as I learned how to manage the school in March, found what mistakes had been made (were being made), and worked to correct things.

Click on graph to view larger image. The numbers don’t lie.

I was not formally trained.  I was handed two Job Description printouts and told to follow them.  Needless-to-say, it was not an ideal transition to a Management role.  Did I fret?  Was I negative?  Did I ever think that a turn-around was out of the question?  Absolutely not!  I smiled at the challenges laid before me and charged ahead with a vigor and excitement that helped to immediately change the mood of the students, teachers and staff.

On top of managing the worst of the three schools, I was also the Human Resources manager.  Within the first week, I had to fire one teacher at another school, hire a replacement, as well as hire two replacements at my school (one for my own classes as I had gone from instructor to manager with 2 days to spare).  The next week I was told to fire the “temporary” Admin Assistant who had trained me and to hire a new one, then to train the new one.  Meanwhile I had to somehow keep the 14 students who had made arrangements to complete their studies, transfer to colleges, or transfer to other language schools.  We had another 4 students who simply stopped attending our school which means to start, I was -18.  Remember the goal?… +10!  Yes, somehow I have to recruit 28 new students for April when we only had 60 attending in March.  I had one month to do it and I failed.  I’m now out of a job.

Yes, I was given an Afternoon Special promotion (which wasn’t my idea and enticed zero students to transfer in).  And yes, I was given an amazing Transfer-In special that offered a 40% tuition discount to the first 40 students who transferred in!  This special happened to commence on March 24th, approximately one week before the beginning of the April session.  In my opinion, a little too late, but that didn’t stop us from trying.  We e-mailed over 100 ex-students and called over 60 of them.  The response was generally positive.  The result was that the students had already paid for April session at their current school but would consider transferring in May or June especially since they heard that we were “under new management.”  As of April 7th, exactly 2 students had signed up for the 40% discount with one more considering it.  None of the three were any we had contacted.

Too late.  As of April 7th, 18 students had left and 14 had began.  This left us at -4 (56 students, down 4 from 60).  I knew this was bad, but considered it a win as we had generated a buzz for the coming months, had retained all our best teachers despite not having a full schedule, and had an office staff that was committed not only to doing things right, but to doing things better.

April 8th -  “I regret to inform you.”…

So what now?  First, I wish good luck to the students, teachers, and office staff.  I know things are not going well and I hope that enough is held together to make sure that the students continue getting a good education, the teachers continue to get enough hours to keep them hanging on, and the office staff is able to manage it all with the Director now more permanently housed at the school to perform the tasks where I failed.

As for me?  I’ll end this post the same way I ended the Teacher to Manager post:

Yes, I am still a bit confused by the speed with which all of this happening as well, but I’m not complaining either.

What can you do? Smile, work hard, and learn as much as you can.

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