Six Flags appoints Selim Bassoul as new CEO

The message making the rounds is that parks will be (almost) entirely responsible for their own operations, marketing, P&L, and capex.

Makes you wonder if they are trimming down in the hopes of selling.

bigboy said:

Where are you getting that they have no corporate HR staff?

And while I get what you're saying about succession planning, have they ever promoted a CEO from within? Not in the last 30 years as far as I'm aware.

While I don’t know their HR structure, I do know they have no leader as SIX just fired their CHRO. Does SIX now have a bunch of corporate HR generalists reporting into the CEO or CFO of a $1.5B company?

While I’m not sure history with SIX really matters as they don’t have a single board member that’s been with the company longer than 2 years, they did promote their CFO John Duffey a few years back.

Any well managed organization has a deep leadership bench and s succession plans. It appears SIX just eliminated the majority of their leadership. Park-level management for 9 months of the year is almost exclusively focused on operations. Who at the company is focused on innovation or strategic planning or creative development or talent development etc when all your leaders are also operating the parks 9 months/year? It isn’t the CEO since he has 20+ direct reports now.

it’s clear this new regime is implementing a Spirt Airlines approach (where the new Chairman came from) - which spells disaster for the already lacking guest experience / quality at SF.

Fun said:

The message making the rounds is that parks will be (almost) entirely responsible for their own operations, marketing, P&L, and capex.

Makes you wonder if they are trimming down in the hopes of selling.

That’s similar to what I’ve heard and lines up with what’s been reported about the Arlington and San Antonio. And that is a huge reversal from late last year when they cut a lot of longtime staff at the parks and moved things like purchasing and group sales to the corporate level.

Dennis Spiegel is reporting more details on who is leaving: https://mailchi.mp/d8e6a2bbcdee/itps-leisure-news-breaking-news?e=0655306d70

In addition to what he reported, numerous mid-level year-round positions at the individual parks were also eliminated. The fire department at Great Adventure among those layoffs: https://www.facebook.com/sixflagsfirefighters/posts/5426925270667964

Scott Ross and Selim Bassoul seem like they would get along well. Wonder who wins the race to the bottom?

That many direct reports is a great recipe for failure.

What a disaster. The CEO of a $1.5B publicly traded company is going to be directly overseeing food and beverage, merchandise and games, park operations, maintenance, engineering, entertainment.... and then have 15 park general managers, the CFO, the CIO, 3 attorneys, the VP of safety/security, VP of sales, VP of corporate sponsorships and VP of employee benefits all report directly to him? That's 24 direct reports - plus direct responsibility for the operations listed above.

How does the Board of a public company let that happen?

I've had 10 directs and that's too many, and not even running company.

"Reporting to" is a relative term in this scenario. It's doubtful Bassoul actually wants each person checking in with him on everything, every day. Based on the email that went out, I don't get the impression he wants to micromanage.

It's going to take a while to unlearn decades of hand-cuffed decision making. The purported benefit of this change is that parks are going to make their own decisions, and check in periodically to report how things are going.

Could this actually work for Six? A flat organization like Phantasialand, Blackpool, Holiday World, or Knoebels would make you think it could, but it's certainly not an apples to apples comparison. But in every case where a major operator acquired a small family run park, it was done under the belief that corporate entity could run it better.

I am not talking about the CEO checking when one of the 24 employees reporting to him clocks in or out. I am referring to the talent development and employee coaching, mentoring, thought partnering that happens at successful organizations. You simply cannot do that with 24 direct reports, of any level (his reports now range from staff attorney to mid-level VP's to park GM's to C suite) - PLUS overseeing all operations - F&B, merchandise, engineering, entertainment, etc. etc.

I understand the philosophy of making decisions closer to the field vs in a detached corporate bubble - but it appears the new philosophy at SIX is to turn the company into Spirit Airlines 2.0 - which will have dramatically poor outcomes for both the employee and guest experience.

You can't professionally develop 24 people. It's hard enough to do that for ten people and do the administrative execution work of a manager, let alone CEO.

The SFOT park president that has been there for a little over the year and with the company for a couple of decades was unexpectedly shown the door last week. He confirmed it with a public post on his personal Facebook page. From everything I've heard, he was doing a lot to improve the park and was very well liked by his employees, all of whom are apparently pretty shell shocked.

That's not a good sign. I'm not saying that someone well-liked can't do wrong, but it sets off a wave of distrust and concern around the entire company. It means that GM's now have to manage up, which is exhausting.