CEO to CEO

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.

Too Much One-Way Communication

An angry bee hive is very distracted from its work of making honey. One fast way to create an angry upset work team is to have flaming, angry, or confusing e-mails and texts circulating. Once the send button is hit, there’s no stopping it.

High Maintenance Employees

Few things can trigger a reaction in me as quickly as high-maintenance employees. My allergy to this behavior developed the way all allergies develop—through repeated exposure. After 20 years of leading organizations I swore the oath: No more babysitting. (I know, I can be a slow learner).

Misplaced Loyalty

He was employee number two and endured the cold, hard years of startup, when you were all a payroll away from failure. If you’re human, you’ll feel a deep sense of loyalty to him. In another example, the CFO spent three straight months in China a few years back despite the objections of his wife and two young children, where he opened up critical operations there. Wow! That’s loyalty.

But what do you do if their performance has slipped? What if the company has outgrown their ability to keep up? Should you be tough on them? Do you have the will to fire them if that’s what’s required? Most CEOs and senior executives struggle with this situation.

The Wheels Coming off the Bus

By Robert Sher

What could ever be wrong with a strong, growing top line? What would be wrong with running a lean company? The answer: Too much work to do and not enough people or resources to execute it well.

There comes a tipping point, when an organization goes from hectic, busy and rushed, to being overwhelmed, chaotic and hopeless. When the wheels fully separate from the bus. It’s not pretty. The ugliness usually includes employees yelling and screaming; angry customers, vendors cutting off supply, resignations without notice, hostility in the workplace, and much worse. Perhaps you’ve seen this in your organization.

The Wheels Coming off the Bus, the seventh in the Defeating Corporate Distraction series, will take you through some common issues and techniques related to this common distraction. To access the entire series written to date, click here.

Functional Areas Not Synchronized

By Robert Sher

Some companies walk like Frankenstein. They are stiff, with legs, arms and head coordinated in only the crudest sense; the parts of the monster having been chopped off from different dead bodies and crudely sewn together with little attention to the connection of nerves. The act of creation is unnatural; from the sky, in one big bolt of lightning Frankenstein comes alive. Without good coordination, the monster doesn’t know his own strength, accidentally (at first) killing people, then growing confused, angry and afraid all at once. After a sad string of events, Dr. Frankenstein dies and the monster commits suicide on a funeral pyre (at the North Pole).

In our organizations, we hire our people from various other companies, toss them together into different departments in our company, then sometimes sit back and wonder why the various departments don’t work well together. We wonder why our progress toward our objectives is clumsy, delayed, and occasionally self-destructive.

It’s because we forgot to sew our organization’s nerves together, to test them, and to allow them time to grow strong before we call on them to perform in an agile, effective manner.

Debates without Decisions

By Robert Sher

After a blissfully distracting weekend I walk into the conference room for our Monday 8am top team meeting. The view of the San Francisco Bay distracts my attention as I wait for the last VP to arrive. Ever eager and feisty, Marie starts talking about the product launch strategy with the four others, bringing up contentious points that I could have sworn we had debated twice before. I notice a barge pick up speed on the water, and my mind drifts to thinking about the 1993 movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray, where he had to repeat the same day, over and over again. There was something he needed to learn before time would move forward again. I wondered what I needed to learn here to stop this re-debating problem, because it is maddening.

This topic, the fifth in the series, Debates without Decisions, will take you through some common issues and techniques to get just the right amount of analysis.

Data and Analysis Obsession

By Robert Sher

I hate making mistakes. They waste money, make me look foolish and I feel embarrassed. When I wore a younger man’s clothes, I would tirelessly dig for data, and analyze away. I remember with pride a massive spreadsheet I built in 1983 that held that detailed historical data and projections for three related entities. Recalculating took ten minutes, yet I waited with baited breath to see my new financial future each time. This topic, the fourth in the series, Data and Analysis Obsession will take you through some common issues and techniques to get just the right amount of analysis. To access the entire series written to date, click here.

Some organizations get obsessed with fact finding and analysis, and they keep it up until it’s too late. Too late might mean the decision was imposed upon them. Perhaps the market window closed. Perhaps the product failed horribly before the recall decision was made, and that meant it went legal and political both. These bad outcomes are in addition to the time, cost and effort of analyzing far in excess of what reality requires.