Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Home Depot’s CEO has hit the bricks. Which, I suppose, is some kind of good news. But, he’s still walking away with over $200M for doing a bad job. And, he, the Home Depot board, and Wall Street are looking at the wrong reasons for the poor stock performance:

“In a letter to Mr. Nardelli, the firm said Home Depot’s stock had underperformed since 2000 because of “deficient strategy, operations, capital allocation, and governance.”

Here’s more: Mr. Nardelli has not been shy about discussing the issue. “We have a close relationship to home builders, he said in a recent interview, and I have never seen them so aggressive to pull back.”

Righhhttttt, Mr. Nardelli. Those big customers are acting so irrationally! Or, maybe, just maybe they’re pulling back due to the way they’re treated at the one-on-one human level. Based on the ongoing responses (here, here, and here) to my Home Depot posts, the biggest problem was/is lack of respect for people - all types of customers as well as the employees.

When you’ve got revenue problems, one of the root causes is almost always the people. Without them (on both sides of the transaction), you don’t have a business, regardless of how much you pay the CEO or pontificate about strategies, capital allocation and governance.

So, memo to HD board: Put on your coat, get in the car and go visit some stores. And, don’t punish people if they tell you things you don’t like. You might also spend some time in blogville (ask your assistant for help with that keyboard thingie). A lot of people absolutely despise your company, and that’s just the employees! Exhibit One: The logo above comes from the site Home Depot Sucks. A lot of rage - and photos - there, and over 50,000 people appear to have visited the site. Exhibit Two: digg comments

Read More: Tom Peters, “Bye Bob” Here’s a snippet re Nardelli’s management style:

(Nardelli was enraptured with the military approach…”very common among those who did not serve, I’ve observed. Those of us who did serve know that the public “military model of leadership” has little to do with the real thing. As far as I know, incidentally, Nardelli’s former boss, Jack Welch, was never active military either.)

Tags: Home Depot, marketing, marketing troubleshooting, customer service