According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Circuitous is from Medieval Latin circuitōsus, from Latin circuitus, a going around. Every once in a while the six years of latin I took in high school and college actually pays off.  It’s second declension, masculine, if you really want to know (yea, sometimes I am that geeky)…

According to Wordnet, it’s defined as marked by obliqueness or indirection in speech or conduct.  So let’s take a little ride… a “long and winding road” so to speak…

It’s 1949 and the first Wards Company retail store is opened in Richmond, Virginia, 10 years later annual sales in their four stores tops $1 million dollars. Seventeen years and a couple of takeovers later, sales reach $23 million.  Fast forward another seventeen years (to 1983) and sales have reached $246 million, and a name change is on the horizon.  Just four short years later, and sales have quadrupled to over $1 billion.  Growth continues unbridled over the next four years, with the $2 billion sales mark achieved in 1987.  A little more than a decade later, sales exceed $10 billion, with another $2 billion in a new venture only four years old.

And then the dot.com bust, the rise of internet purchasing, and a new direct competitor begin to erode confidence and market share in the company.

In 2003, the company moves from a commissioned sales to a single hourly pay structure.  Lay-offs occur in an attempt to cut costs while the company attempts to change their business strategy to compete with fast growing bricks-and-mortar and on-line organizations that continue to take market share away.  A year later, the company begins shuttering under-performing stores, with additional stores shut down a year later.  In 2005 the company turns down an unsolicited bid to buy the company.  Two years later (just two years ago), senior management begins leaving in droves, flocking to the competition.  And then it happened.

The company fired all of their highest paid hourly workers in a “Cost-Cutting” move, offering them their job back at a lower wage.  Customers were shocked, the public was outraged, and the company suffered continued negative momentum.  And then the coup-de-grace in 2008…  A white night came in and offered to buy the company for $1 billion dollars, but after due diligence, rescinded their offer just three months later.

On their 60th birthday, the company announced liquidation plans, closing down almost 600 stores and putting 30,000 employees (and their families) at grave financial risk.  Is it any wonder that according to my firm’s most recent national benchmark on workforce engagement, only…

• 60 percent of employees are satisfied with the strategic direction of the company
• 56 percent believe their company’s senior leadership is effective
• 53 percent feel their senior leaders are people of high personal integrity and have a clear vision for the future
• 43 percent feel that senior management treats employees like their most important asset.

I’ve written about Circuit City for the two years I’ve been blogging, and I wish I hadn’t seen this eventual demise coming.  But like I have said time and time again, customers buy products from companies but form relationships with people.  And when you don’t take care of your people, customers will leave in droves, they’ll take the short route to a competitor.

Just ask the delightfully happy folks at Best Buy…