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Jeff Johnson was uneasy as he drove down an unfamiliar road on the outskirts of Cleveland. He had been there before, but not for many years, and the area had changed. What used to be a remote location was now a busy commercial district filled with office buildings, restaurants, and even a Starbucks on the corner. In the distance he could see his destination: a sprawling complex of squat, gray buildings housing production facilities for the Happy Face Toy Company.
It had been only one month since Jeff was appointed CEO of Happy Face Toys. It wasn’t a role he’d expected to play at this point in his life, but circumstances had conspired to make it happen. Happy Face Toys was more than just a business to Jeff; it was the family business, his family’s legacy. Currently that business was in real trouble, and he was the only Johnson in a position to do something about it.
Happy Face Toys was started in 1953 by Jeff’s grandfather, who had worked tirelessly to grow it from a small factory making just one product into an international toy manufacturer. Jeff’s father had taken over in the late 1980s, after his grandfather’s retirement, and expanded it even further, making it the industry leader for many years. During high school and college, Jeff spent summers working in the company mail room, but after graduating, he chose to forge his own career path. He moved to California to join a software company. He’d done well in the technology sector and always assumed he’d finish out his career there, never imagining he would end up back in the family business. But the death of his father a few months before had forced his hand.
When Jeff’s father died, the company was faltering, and there was no clear successor to take his place. Losing his father was hard enough. Jeff couldn’t stand to see Happy Face fail as well, and he didn’t trust anyone to care as much as he did about its success. So when he started hearing rumors that the board of directors was thinking about selling the business, he made a choice. He quit his job in California and moved to Chicago, where the company had its headquarters, ready to follow in his father’s footsteps as CEO of the family business.
Jeff believed in his heart that it was the right thing to do, but it still hadn’t been an easy decision. He and his wife had lived in California for more than twenty years. Their daughter had been raised there and still lived nearby with her own family. Leaving them behind was tough on everyone. Jeff was really hoping the sacrifice would be worth it. Unfortunately, not everyone at Happy Face was thrilled with the idea of his taking over.
Happy Face Toys had been on a slow decline for nearly a decade. Steadily increasing competition from overseas and a lack of innovative new products were the reasons most commonly cited within the company. Even before Jeff’s father passed away, the board of directors had been talking about making big changes, including bringing in fresh talent. The company clearly had considerable financial problems, but Jeff wasn’t so sure the board had the right vision for how to address them. And because he now owned 49 percent of the company’s stock—thanks to an inheritance from his father—they had to take him seriously.
Even still, when he proposed himself as his father’s successor, the board wasn’t convinced that Jeff, with his lack of experience in the toy industry, was the right choice. In a moment of boldness or desperation (he wasn’t sure which), Jeff presented the board with a challenge: “Give me one year. If I can’t turn things around and get this company back on track in that time, then fire me and bring in whoever you want. I won’t fight you.”
So they gave him the job. The problem was that Jeff had no idea how he was going to keep that job.
The Cleveland plant he was now driving toward was where Happy Face Toys had first started more than sixty years before, and it had continued to be the company’s headquarters and sole manufacturing plant for many years after that. Then the business took off and things changed. As Happy Face grew into an international brand, most of the business functions were moved to a large office building in Chicago, and newer, larger, state-of-the-art facilities were built in China and Mexico, where the vast majority of their products were now made. During that time the Cleveland plant had gradually shrunk to become mostly a distribution hub for its U.S. business. Throughout all the changes, however, the plant had remained open. In fact, it still manufactured the first big product that Happy Face ever launched: Crazy Paste, a brightly colored molding clay that every kid in America had played with in the 1950s and 1960s. Crazy Paste wasn’t nearly as popular as it once had been, but it still had a nostalgic value in the marketplace.
Jeff had a difficult decision to make as the new CEO. The Cleveland plant had been struggling for years, and the board of directors thought it was high time to shut it down. Jeff had nearly agreed—the numbers spoke for themselves—but at the last minute he decided to wait. If he was going to shutter a piece of company history, a piece of his family’s legacy, and cause hundreds of people to lose their jobs, the least he could do was visit the place first.
It was his first big decision as CEO and it wasn’t a popular one. In fact, Jeff had already heard rumbles that many of the company’s senior leaders thought it was a crazy first move and a big waste of time. After all, the failure of the Cleveland plant was just the tip of the iceberg, and there were so many more problems to be solved to get Happy Face back on track. As a new leader, Jeff didn’t want to give the impression that he had trouble making hard decisions, but his instincts told him this was what he needed to do. He didn’t have high expectations for his visit, but he hoped he might get some sense of how things had gone so terribly wrong. And if he did end up closing the plant, at least he could do it with a clean conscience, knowing he’d given the matter a thorough review.
As he pulled into the parking lot of the production plant, with its badly chipped paint and ancient sign reading HAP Y ACE TO S!, he couldn’t help but wonder whether the doubters were right, whether he was indeed making a colossal mistake.