CEO to CEO

The Unpredictable CEO’s Destruction of their Senior Leaders

What a waste when bright, competent senior leaders who report to the CEO hang back, and fail to lead their company assertively. When they tiptoe around the CEO and wait for permission to take charge. This is a particular problem for middle market CEOs, whose top executives typically rise through the ranks and have not held senior management positions at a number of companies and developed confidence about taking initiative at the highest levels.

Mid-market firms have small leadership teams but must get a lot accomplished. This requires all top team members to lead with confidence, working with each other as well as with their CEO.

Part II: Where’s the Boss? Driving Results in a Meeting

Last week I ranted a bit about how CEOs shouldn’t listen to the “time-wasting” bad rap that meetings have, but instead should make their meetings powerful, where they leverage the collective wisdom and experience of their top teams. This week I’m enumerating specific techniques to make meetings produce real results.

Specific Techniques to make meetings “work”

The key to making meetings incredibly productive is having the CEO (or a powerful executive on the team) require all meeting participants to follow these rules:

1. Every participant must prepare before the meeting. If everyone has received and read the handouts, there is no need to read them together at the start of the meeting. Your most disciplined execs will do this, so please don’t punish them by making them sit through the same material again because an undisciplined executive didn’t—even if it’s you, the CEO.

Part 1: Where’s the Boss? Driving Results in a Meeting

I came across this article last week in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Where's the Boss? Trapped in a Meeting” that made it sound like CEOs weren’t productive and spent large amounts of time in meetings, at lunches and traveling, with as little as six hours per week working solo.

But why are hours spent working solo an indicator of being productive? Meeting time versus working solo time has little to do with productivity. The issue is not the sheer amount of meeting time, it is whether that meeting time (or any time) is impactful in increasing the enterprise value of the firm. Every minute a CEO spends is a minute gone-by. Each minute must be invested wisely.

M&A and the Mid-Market CEO: Survey Presented at BLC Forum

Survey of Alliance CEOs shows M&A is now on their front burner but it’s easy to get burned. Presented at the Business Leadership Council’s Forum discussion on M&A, February 28, 2012. By Robert Sher

Slide Deck is attached. Download M&A Survey Graphs-BLC

Assumptions About Perspectives

For the past month, I’ve been administering my Defeating Corporate Distraction diagnostic to management teams of companies with +50 million in revenues. The CEO and the top executives fill out the online diagnostic, which takes only ten minutes to complete. There are around fifty questions covering the Twelve Corporate Distractions. Broadly speaking, each respondent indicates whether they perceive each as a big distraction or not much of a distraction at all. Click here to
see an explanatory letter that contains some sample statements from the survey.

Developing in the Developing World

He dropped the cold, hard fact on the table between us. 90% of global urbanization - the building of new cities - is happening in developing countries: not in the USA, and not in Europe. David Gensler, Executive Director of Gensler, leads a 3000 person global architecture and design firm that was once primarily domestic.

In the late 1980's, Gensler's global customers began building abroad, and they asked the firm to support them there. Gensler said yes, and then began the odyssey of learning to build thriving, high performing offices in China and other developing countries. Today they have secured their position as a truly global organization, and are poised to benefit from the shift in urban development to developing countries.

Transparency About Future Events?

Imagine your direct report (who has been acting a bit odd) comes to you and asks, “What does my future career here hold for me, boss?” Are you completely transparent? Do you tell them everything that runs through your head? I doubt it. But how much of their future would you discuss? How much do you actually know?

The Unpredictable Leader

Are you a surprise to your subordinates? Or do they know you, know what you’ll say, what you’ll want, how you’ll react?

In an ideal world, leaders convey the mission and vision of the organization with such great clarity that their teams can make excellent decisions on their own, always executing the mission, moving toward the vision. These leaders motivate their teams to perform at high levels. They are perceived as stable, self assured and focused.

Managing Multiple Constituencies

We all know that “being the boss” doesn’t really mean we get what we want. Some companies have a simple ownership structure with clarity on who has the last word. But Alliance member Jim Harrison, CEO of MLSListings Inc. (Group 310), has multiple overlapping constituencies which blend ownership, industry associations, governance, sales channels and customers.

Compulsive Micro-Management

I hated that governor! That nasty device didn’t let my rental truck exceed 55 mph. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, as part of my job, I would rent a 24' bobtail truck with lift gate to pick up cargo at the port in San Francisco. You could floor the gas pedal but it would never go faster than 55. The rental company’s trucks were old but cheap, and they let me drive them even though I wasn’t anywhere close to 25 years old.

That frustrating, speed limiting driving experience reminds me of running a company where micro-management has taken root.