Two weeks after my IKEA interview with Martin, I still hadn’t heard a thing. Although I left the interview with high confidence, I started thinking about the reality of the numbers. They probably had over 1,000 people apply and were probably hiring only about 100 salespeople. Turned out the real numbers were worse:  1,300 applied and they hired only 50 salespeople. Although it’s a mammoth store, it is designed to be mostly self-service, so most employees work in the warehouse and logistics. Glad I didn’t know that. Anyway, I decided to drive over to the IKEA offices to see what I could find out. I walked in and the woman sitting at the desk asked who I was looking for. Before I could complete my sentence, I saw my Martin pop up from one of the computer desks and walk across the room to me. “Frank! Did you get the call?”  Very impressed and pleased that he remembered my name, I said slowly “Uh, no, that’s why I was following up Martin, to see where we stand.” He told me that things moved along more slowly than anticipated, but I was slated to get a call today from personnel in Minnesota.  “If you accept; Welcome to the Team!”   Long story only slightly shorter: I filled out the background checks and did a saliva drug test. I’m glad the new Portillo’s restaurant next door had not yet opened because I would have stopped for a Chicago Dog first and you know what they say about poppy seeds!

Two more weeks later, with eager anticipation, I entered my first day of training with IKEA. Now this is a whole new ballgame for me. I’ve lived 35 years in corporate America with 2 large drug companies who, quite frankly, have their acts together. People in these companies are GOOD. The Training department is an integral part of the business and the trainers are among the best and brightest. IKEA is a very different business. Privately held, succeeding (and expanding) in a shrinking bricks-and-mortar retail home furnishings marketplace, with margins that are razor thin. Yep; a whole new ballgame. So the truth is that the training was not crisp. It was not efficient, well-coordinated or polished. Too much on-line training, and not enough live. And some of the videos were over 10 years old. The air of disorganization prevails to this day. BUT, it was effective and the folks pressed into training were passionate about what they do. Everyone there had drunk deeply from the IKEA Kool-Aid fountain, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. Many were downright religious about their feelings for the IKEA family.

Want a short history? IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad, who is now in his mid-80s. A recent video shows him to be sharp, alert, warm yet tough, with a self-deprecating, sly sense of humour. His 3 sons now mostly run the show. The first two letters of IKEA are his initials, followed by the first letters of his birthplace and boyhood home in Sweden. And IKEA trumpets its Swedish heritage proudly in all 400 of its stores. Most stores are in Europe and this now makes 45 in the US. The IKEA vision is To Create a Better Everyday Life for the Many People. You can see the affordability aspect built into that vision. Rightfully, we spent several days learning about IKEA Values. There are 11 of them, which I immediately thought was too many. Apparently they came to the same conclusion because last year they tried to cut them in half but fell short because they simply combined a few and even added one to end up with 8. They are: Togetherness, Caring for People and Planet, Cost Consciousness, Simplicity, Renew & Improve, Be Different with Meaning, Give & Take Responsibility, and Lead by Example. Ingvar himself said the most difficult to fulfill is Simplicity because companies naturally gravitate toward complex systems and “bureaucracy complicates and paralyzes, so we need to push against that every day.” A man after my own heart. In fact, some of you may remember that the last quote I had on my email signature line was: Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication. Indeed.

While Values are critical, it’s the way we live a company’s values that creates its Culture. And Culture is the heartbeat of any Company. The President of my last company liked to say that “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast.” That’s for damn sure, and IKEA appears to understand that as they promote the IKEA Culture as the most important secret to success. So how do they promote a strong culture? Excellent benefits are provided to all who work more than 20 hours a week (not me), there is great flexibility in scheduling, email access is not provided outside of IKEA offices so no working while off work (bit of a security caution there as well methinks, but still contributes to strong work-life balance). People who work at IKEA; love IKEA, and want you to love it too. That says a lot.

So I’ve worked for 6 days; 2 days a week for 3 weeks. Still not the most organized place but we are getting things done. The real challenge is that people have been hired intermittently for the last two months so training is continuous and a bit disjointed. By now I’ve met all 50 people working in Sales. And I’ve had eyeballs on most of the 200 total people hired so far. You would not be surprised to learn that ‘Pot-smoking guy’ is not among them. Neither is ‘College Grad’ who must have rambled in his interviews. ‘Ipad-guy’ didn’t get through, although that’s no surprise either. The only person I recognize from our support group at the job fair is ‘Cleaning Lady’ who is as friendly as ever and rocking through training. She is also in Sales but under a different department head. We are all working toward a ‘soft opening’ (friends and family) at the end of September with an official opening date of October 11. I think we will be ready for the onslaught, and I look forward to telling you about it.

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