TIGHTENING CONTROL? DOUBLE CHECK YOUR TRUST LEVEL

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF TRYING TO TIGHTEN CONTROL OF YOUR COMPANY AS A MULTI-PURPOSE ANSWER, FIRST DOUBLE CHECK YOUR TRUST LEVEL

Do you trust your business strategy?  Are you willing to lean into it and not falter for the foreseeable future?

Do you trust that you have communicated the strategy.  You, not the communication department.  You
Your voice.  Your belief.  Your words.  Your authenticity.  Do you trust that you have massaged it into the DNA of your company through endless conversations big and small?

Do you trust you talent?  Do you have the right people in the right roles.  Do you trust them or are you still testing them?  Do you trust they can succeed?

Do you trust you have the right amount of stretch and support for your top leaders?  Are you stretching their capacity or stretching them beyond capacity without suportive challenge?

Do you trust that you have an accurate view of your company?  Do you probe and listen?  Have you established your intent to talk to anyone about anything?  Do you have formally scheduled but informally run mehods to get the pulse of the organization?

I know that many of your companies are fighting for survival.   And the temptation is to control your business to victory.  I get it.  Just double check your trust level before tightening control.

STAY IN LOVE WITH YOUR BUSINESS

STAY IN LOVE WITH YOUR BUSINESS

Not your company

Not your colleagues (especially not them)

Not your power

Not your perks

Not your status in the community

Not leadership in general

Not organizational theories

Not business trends that offer false hope

Touch it

Know it in detail

Nurture its parts

Accept the human part and bring out the best

Be anxious to get back to it if you have to be away

Be goofily proud of it

Constrain you own ego for it

Don't take it for granted

Make time for it--the real daily grit of  it

Protect it

Be refreshed when you spend time with it.

Follow the old adage for marriages--"Don't go to bed mad."  In other words know something is wrong and fix it before it festers  

Stay in love with your business.

YOU DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ THIS! GO BACK TO WORK

YOU DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ THIS and I know it.
And I still want you to.
Because as a top executive leader you can look so dumb and be so ineffective and do so much harm if  you are not checking your blindspots.
Here's the deal.
I'll try to be blunt first.
Then I'll say more so you know I'm not nuts.
I just want you to take five minutes every Monday  to turn around fast and try to catch a glimpse of  your leadership shadow/ blindspot, so you don't make so many messes that you don't know about.

Deal?

BE WORLD CLASS AT THE BORING STUFF TOO

GRANDIOSE, PUFFED UP COMPANIES

There are so many grandiose, puffed up aspirations for companies today.
As a  counter balance, let's hear it for the boring stuff that keeps your organization running.
One of my favorite CEO'S came into my office and caught me pissing and moaning about my boring stuff--budget preparation,  painstaking plans, reports on what I had done when I wanted to be working on what I was going to do.  Schedules, outside vendors, community speeches.  I looked up and asked him if he had as much gunk in his job as I did.   He said, "Forty percent of my job is gunk but my sixty per-cent is the best in all the company."  He then said, "Do that forty percent well and your sixty percent will get better and better."

As Ceo you set the strategy, the vision, the culture, the long range plans.  You search for talent and manage the outside world and the Board of Directors.  Don't forget to honor your gunk.  The day to day discipline of the business.  Being on time, not rescheduling unless under real duress, meeting with your admin person to keep him or her appraised of what's going on, constant review of your calendar to align it with what matters most.  And honor the daily stuff of everyone you bump into.  Ask about it.  Thank people for it.
Most people don't think the CEO has any gunk to do. Just the glamorous big picture creative stuff.  Right.  Let people know that you have daily irritating stuff and that it matters. Make Standard Operating Procedures worthy of attention. And let people  know that their sixty percent can get better and better in direct relationship to bringing excellence to the boring--the 40 percent gunk.  Don't be blind to the value of the gunk.

If you are a jerk, you'd better be brilliant

IF YOU ARE A JERK (and you know what I really mean) THEN YOU'D BETTER BE BRILLIANT


If you are not the smartest person in your company
If you don't have a vision for what could be that is embedded in detail in your DNA
If you don't have the fortitude to bring your vision to fruition no matter what
If you can't live, eat and breathe what it is you want to create
Then you can't afford to be an asshole.

You need to get nice.
Learn how to include
Learn how to celebrate
Learn how to share the limelight
Learn how to guard your integrity
Learn how to ask for help
Learn how much you don't know

Because if you aren't a brilliant jerk, you won't be forgiven

Everybody Raise Your Hand

EVERYBODY--RAISE YOU HAND!

Hand raising is a very healthy exercise for your company.  Volunteering, taking initiative, starting a project, raising an objection, developing a new idea.   Hand raising shows the willingness to expend energy, to give, to say "yes".

 You as the CEO or top leader always have your hand raised.  "Hey Board,  Call on me. Listen to me.  Here's what we will do, have to do, can do , are doing.  Here's an answer."" Hey EC  How about we, let's settle this, let's create that."  You are always in a state of raising your hand.  Great.  But do you have a hand raising organization? Do you create access to important work?  Posting is a wonderful hand raising tool.  Even at the executive level.  Raising your hand says, "I want this, I'll expose my flaws to have a chance to do it.  I have energy for this."  Passive talent planning systems that move talent like pawns can induce a subtle passivity and lack of tangential intitiative.  Does your organization post for important projects?  Can people drop into your office to share a thought?  Do people pull others together to create opportunity.  Is their an eager even irritating energy to say "Look at me, call on me, let me do this?"

 Hand raising means, "Yes I want to and I think I can".   So check to see if you are numb from having your hand raised all the time.  Maybe not raised as much as yanked.  Ask yourself as CEO, "Do I have a hand raising organization AND more importanty, ask yourself at this stage of your career and power  "What do I actually want to  raise my hand for?"

They're Watching

Assume you speak into a public address system

every time you label something as CONFIDENTIAL.

People care inordinately about what you have to say - from irritation with coffee in the cafeteria to the next merger upcoming.  You give out cues all the time.  Look outside the company for friendship and a place to spill your guts.  You are MAGNIFIED. 

Be aware of the fact that you have a virtual GRO-LITE on the top of your head EVERY MINUTE OF EVERYDAY.  Where you turn your head things start to grow - attention starts to be paid.   A  CEO who noticed an ice spot at the entrance and mentioned it only to have an expensive heated floor installed the next day.  Or the Retail ops exec who obsessed about bananas on the shelf and there were thousands of dollars o shrink in bananas that no-one cold figure out - until this exec left.   When you ask a question tell why.  If not, you will have people talking about the rationale and making up delicious stories not knowing just how boring you can be.

During times when you are considering acquisitions or restructures or other highly confidential strategic directives YOU DISAPPEAR.  YOU LEAVE A VACUUM THAT IS LIKE A NEON ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SOMETHING BIG AND SCAREY IS GOING ON.  Even when you are present you are not present.  Your preoccupation is evident.  You look sheepish and asleep at the wheel.  People gossip about you and wonder where you are and why you aren't doing your job.  And it's hard to interact when you are carrying big secrets.  It is your job to go toward the organization when there is a major transition going on.    This is when WHO  you are matters more than what you have to say.   Be physically present in as many places as possible.  CEO sitings matter more than substantial interaction.  Your presence is soothing  and grounding.  Much more than you will ever know.  This degree of truth about this  should be incredible humbling.  At hese moments you are the  papa or mama bear of the organization.  Like it or not.