Gillette found itself trapped in a downward spiral. In a pamphlet Kilts produced entitled “Escaping the Circle of Doom,” he pointed out that businesses get in trouble by setting overly ambitious objectives, such as increasingly unrealistic sales growth targets; then, in trying to meet those targets, making bad decisions. Gillette compounded its circle-of-doom problems by allowing its spending and overhead to grow out of control. The company had become the fastest bill-payer in the industry and the slowest collector of receivables. As part of its lack of financial discipline and poor information systems, sales results were not tallied every day or even every week - merely at the end of each quarter.

At Gillette, I felt comfortable only about a year after I walked in that we knew exactly what we would need to do over the next five years.

“A leader must take action immediately to fix obvious problems. But developing an insightful strategic plan will take three to five months. There is too much information and too steep a learning curve to try to implement solid strategy in the first thirty to sixty days.” - Jim Kilts.

... Blake failed to appreciate the true balance of power and the deep cultural influence of the Athlete’s Advisory Council. He felt that he had his ducks in order, with a board mandate and plan approval to carry out the change that he - and many others - believed was essential. In a corporate setting this may have been relatively straightforward, given the generally clear scorecards of financial and organizational performance. Then again, it may very well have been just as difficult and ultimately unsuccessful. Why? Because whether it’s a powerful group of employees, retirees, restive shareholders, or even customers, a failure to assess the culture and the readiness for change among different interest groups can be lethal.

The positive energy that came out of my early days made some people - and me - think that we had that cultural issue fixed. The unfortunate fact, though, was that there was deep-seated resistance to change - a feeling of ‘This guy will be gone in three years and I’ve had my job for twenty, so why should I change?’ With three hundred thousand employees, the problem is inevitably in the middle. It was relatively easy to get to the top management in line - if not, I could fire them - but I couldn’t do that far into the organization. I couldn’t personally determine, for example, who in the tax or logistics department was obstructing progress.

Jim Kilts sets a different tone entirely in the interview posted on Gillette’s intranet after he took over in February 2001. Forget about finding out his taste in magazines or his favorite sports. A Kilts Q&A session is strictly business - in fact, the most personal exchange is a question of how Kilts got started in the consumer products industry.