Don't Sell Your Dog For Someone Else's Brand
Or How a Clueless CEO Killed a Brand's Culture
News came out last week of Clearlink’s CEO James Clarke calling employees back in the office during an all-employee meeting, which shouldn’t be news in itself, except he:
Spent his time praising an employee for selling their dog to go back into the office
Disparaged working moms for not being able to work as hard
Challenged Clearlink employees to work as hard, or harder, than him and many more
This may be old news if you’re chronically online and live on LinkedIn like I do, but I interviewed with Clearlink over 10 times (I swear me writing this isn’t sour grapes) and have known a handful of people who did work there, some being old coworkers.
I wanted to work at Clearlink because I had heard so many good things about how they treated employees, at least until Clarke came on board. One friend left as soon as he had his first town hall, which was just as bad as this, but not publicized.
Clearly, an employee had enough of Clarke’s shenanigans and recorded the town hall and gave it to Vice News, and the aftermath has been nothing but catastrophic for Clearlink.
This is a classic example of how a CEO came along who didn’t fit with the brand and is now taking the brand down with him. A couple of people I know who are still there are trying to interview with as many places as possible to try to leave and tell me morale is insanely low. Something like that is hard to come back from.
If you have a brand, it’s so important to bring on leaders who exemplify and make the brand stronger, not tear it down. It’s obvious Clarke was made CEO to make a buck at all costs. Who cares about the morale of the employees (the people who made the company special to begin with)?
If there is a board at Clearlink, they have a big decision to make. If it were my decision, he would’ve been out the same day. But it’s been about a week since the town hall, and he’s still in power. Keeping a leader like that at the head of the company when morale is dangerously low, and you have a new toxic HR/recruiting problem, that’s hard to come back from. All it takes is bringing in a new leader, some time, and a hard look in the mirror.
But until then, Clearlink, it was nice knowing you.
New Work: Utah Jazz
I was in an interview process with the Utah Jazz for a writer role, and they had me do a writing test where I only had about 24 hours to do the work. In those 24 hours, I wrote two content campaigns with a video script and social post each.
I didn’t get a call for another interview – but personally, I think I kicked ass in the very limited time I had. Click the Jazz note below to see what they’re missing out on.
Recommendation Corner: Zulu
There are a lot of new hardcore bands making waves, like Sunami, Scowl, Gel, and many more, but I’ve been getting the most excited about Zulu.
Hardcore, let alone rock music, is a majority-white genre, but Zulu bucks the mold as an all-Black band, unapologetically bringing the Black experience into their brutal music.
Their new record A New Tomorrow, is brutal, insightful, and beautiful all at once, blending their metallic hardcore with R&B and spoken word interludes.
Hardcore might not be your cup of tea, but Zulu demands to be heard.