PEOPLE ARE CURIOUS ABOUT THE CEO ROLE

It's been a social week.  I've been with lots of different people in lots of different situations--holiday shopping and gatherings.  In conversation about what kind of work I do with top executives, I got many different reactions.
Many continue to irritate and surprise me with their perception of how innately evil business leaders are.

Anyway, I would turn the tables before too many words were said and ask,
"What are you curious about when you think about CEO's  and their role?"

Here is some of what I got:

—Are all CEO's alike?  Can you make generalizations about the people in the role?

—Is the CEO role abused often?  What are the small abuses not just the large ones we hear about?

—What does a CEO have to watch out for?  What are booby traps?

—What are assumptions of CEO's in general that just aren't true, like people are lazy and need to be pushed to perform?

—Is money the primary reason someone wants to be CEO?

—What on earth does a CEO do that is special enough to justify the money they make?

—Why is it so rare for a company to have every employee be an owner, at least with shares of stock?

—Do you have to be arrogant or have a big ego to be a CEO

—Do CEO's have to give up their idealism to do their job?

There you have it.  Food for thought.  Underlying themes of the conversations
showed that the word "corporate" is a nasty one.  Another is that business is boring and only boring people like it. Or greedy jerks. Do we care about perceptions outside of "business"?  Is PR needed?  Does one big bad story of corruption spoil the whole basket of apples?  I don't know. I just got curious about other peoples' curiosity about CEO's. I got curious instead of angry. The operative word is "curious".  The blind spot to watch for is when your own curiosity dulls.  

TRADE-OFFS SHOULD BE EXCRUCIATING DECISIONS

Sometimes trade-off discussions can seem so gentle a kind of garage sale barter. I'll trade you a training program for some more marketing money.
I'll trade you 3 staff positions for an outside expert consultant.  You get used to it. It's just pragmatic priority setting.  

Not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the top strategic choices you, as a top leader, are in charge of making. You make tough decisions all the time.
You fire people, you cut budgets and thus people. Most times you are making the least bad decision.  (You know, the one that sucks less.)  

What I am talking about is choosing the possibility of the future for your company.  This is and should be courageous and scary and risky.  That's why your strategic choices need to be worth it.  Clear with sharp edges.  Every action needs to be a "yes" or a "no".  The things you say "no" to should be very difficult  or your "yes" isn't strong enough.  

AND the excruciating choice needs to be a giant YES.  "NO" decisions will not
grow your business or motivate your associates or enthuse your customers.
Don't be blind to your own juggling and compromising and teaching yourself to think small.  Make the big strategic choice, a "YES" choice, for your company and let the consequences begin.  Make the work worth it.

PARDON ME, YOUR EGO IS SHOWING.

First of all, ego is not bad. Ego helps you want to achieve, to be big in the world, and to be seen and heard. It protects you.  In fact it is all about you.
Unless you are familiar with your ego and know when it is being under utilized
or over utilized, your impact can be unintended.  A skill of a top leader is to 
have the self awareness to understand where she or he is on the continuum of ego. Healthy ego live in the middle, neither too small nor too big for the situation.

Symptoms of too small?
--you resent success of others
--you always (emphasis on "always") put others first
--you give up too soon on influencing others
--you think your voice is not heard
--you don't get noticed for good work

Symptoms of too big?
--you are known for taking credit for others' work
--you take up too much talk time at meetings
--you feel like the world is right when you are on stage performing
--you know that things would not go well without you
--you love external events and roles more than you do the business

Make your list of what healthy ego symptoms look like and send them to me.
I'll publish them anonymously next week.

Don't be blind to your particular ego-print!

WHO HAS THE MOST POWER????

If you are a striving person, you like competition, you like:
to win, you enjoy power you don't mind extreme accountability, you like status
you are driven by recognition for your work.
Then it is quite natural that you want the top job.

If, however, you want to cause large change, you want time to think to reach good decisions, you enjoy collaboration, you want positive impact, you want to be pro-active not reactive, you want to do the right thing for the business----then maybe you don't really want the top job.  

The CEO role or any other of ultimate accountability is incredibly constrained, unbelievably powerless, burdened by the weight of the enterprise and 
the chief decision maker of decisions that "suck less".  

Hard to believe?  Ask a CEO how able she or he is to make something happen,
to make the right thing happen, to think about what is the right thing to happen.  I remember one CEO I worked with who laughed and said, "I feel like I'm on a slow moving elephant heading toward a cliff guiding it with a feather switch".  

There can be much more power and flexibility and satisfaction in a number two role. You can speak more freely, act more creatively, rock the boat more
effectively and collaborate easily.  A number two person or team  has the right balance of freedom and power to truly function.

I'm saying, "THE CEO ROLE ISN'T ALL IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE".  Don't be blinded by the status, the perks, the office, the salary if you like quite a bit of intrinsic satisfaction.  I'm just saying---- think twice before you reject a number two position and don't be surprised if becoming CEO, you think to yourself, "What just happened to me?"

BREATHING SPACE FOR INNOVATION

There are many schools of thought about how to develop more innovation in an organization.  Do you bring it in?  Do you let it out?  Does it reside in the culture or in the person?  If you know how to hire creative people, would that solve the problem?  Do you need a special atmosphere?  Do you have to hire crazy risk takers and then never ever say 'boo' if they make big bad mistakes?

I don't know.
But here is some of what I do know about innovation in companies from my own experience:

l. To create something new, people have to really really really have to have an idea or a goal that they are crazy about--intrigued with, nuts for, won't be told "no" for. That's the driving force, so assigned projects that need creativity may not get it. Let the passionate ones volunteer.

2. To create something new, people have to know how or be able to learn how to think flexibly--to turn things up side down, to come at a task or product from a new perspective. Look for the people who drive you nuts.  They say, "how about?, Why couldn't we?, Why not try this? What if?"  Those people.

3.  Drilling down to a solution or a creation doesn't work for creating something new. The opposite is true. Thinking broadly is needed--exploring in new areas, 
scanning other industries, following an interest or a curiosity to wherever it leads.  It's a way of fluffing up the brain from rigid habits and patterns. Let your people stray. No more industry conferences. Try something very different.

4.  There does need to be a pressing demand at some point in the creative process---for a new product, a different solution, a drop dead end point.
This forces new thought from all of the above.  Here is where you distill all the work in preparation.  So create a mandate worth working toward and hold the importance and the deadline.  Pressure and tension are good for creativity.

5.  Innovation is tough work. It doesn't have to be coddled or treated like it is oh so special and fragile. It takes diligence and experimentation without becoming defeated--- over and over again. Provide some support occasionally.


6. A high risk, high failure environment is not necessary.  A high mess,
high million of small experiments, high learning as you go, high living in the real world attitude is necessary. High high high risk is for start-ups who have no other choice. An elaborate, complicated company is just not as able to be agile and risk crazy. Intrpreneuship, yes. Entrpreneurship inside a company, no.

7.  Play works miracles. A playful approach to work keeps people and projects malleable  and doen't make the work so "important" that people are paralyzed by performance anxiety. Pilots are good fodder for innovation. Play with the idea before you work with the idea. Stay "light" until you hit execution mode.

8.  Innovation needs some protection from punishment (derision, extra tight budget constraints, jealousy) but mostly it need to be allowed to happen.

Innovation needs breathing space.

YOUR ROLE AS PROTECTOR

This topic has been on my mind all week.
I think it's because I have had some bad health care experiences lately.
AND there was not a single person who wasn't trying to do the best work that he or she could. There was not a single person who wasn't pleasant and
client focused. All were competent if not expert professionals.

How does that end up being a bad experience?
How do you support and protect hard working people who want to do a good job?

l.  Kill absurd letter of the law rigid rules that become laughable as they create the opposite of what your business wants to be about.

2. Do not create so many ways to check on people's competence that it makes them incompetent.

3. Don't fragment works processes so that the left hand can't know what the right hand is doing.

4. Don't try to create accountability through check lists that insult and weigh down the service or product being offered.

5. Don't create so much flexibility that chaos results. 

6. Don't specialize tasks so that no one has the pleasure of a whole job being well done.

7. Don't watch the clock more than the result.  

8. Don't believe that only what gets measured, gets done.  Lots of good things get done that are not pulled by measures and rewards.  Make room for these.

9. Constantly create context so that everyone (as in everyone) gets the
understanding of what, why and how things are happening.

10. Don't overload your company with too many goals and too many initiatives.
This weakens leverage and focus.

I see good people wanting to do good work in systems that have gone kind of insane.  Make a sane work culture for your people.

I REPEAT MYSELF AND SO SHOULD YOU!

Repeating yourself is an important feature of the top executive role.  Getting a message, concept or a primary goal deeply embedded in your company takes you saying it again and again and again.  Way more than you want to and way more than you think you need to.  So here I am again reminding you of how hard it is to learn and grow when you are at the top of the organization.  This entry was written a few years ago when I, too, was slow to learn as a top executive.  The very role comes with a learning disability.  I quote me.

"Just get promoted to the top?  You may be the dumbest person in the organization or the least able to learn.  The white noise that surrounds you is the roaring lack of real feedback, the ability to know your impact and learn from it.  

Fundamentally, it is YOUR TASK TO ASK for feedback and opinions. And you need to learn to do it in such a way that is makes ti easy for people to talk to you honestly.  Even then, you should magnify the negative by 5 and minimize the positive by 3.  This is the equation to balance unequal power.
More math. If someone has the nerve (and it takes some) to come to you with an important negative about you or the organization --then they have probably  thought about it for at least  three months, talked about it with at least 3 people for corroboration who have talked to 3 people who have talked to three people.  The pain of the issue has to outweigh the risk of your displeasure.  This ratio is true even if you are the most approachable, open, tolerant CEO.  Your position simply weighs too much.
Positive feedback has its own problems and ratio.  I have seen CEO's wither without some appreciation and recognition and I've seen them blossom and flourish with it.  It's hard to compliment you and give you positive feedback,  It's awkward.  The kiss-up prohibition can be huge.  And there is a danger element of putting a halo on the person who gives it.  Seduction by flattery is used by ambitious people.  Mostly you can smell it.  So, the ratio is too minimize positive feedback by 3.  First it is easier to give and less important than the negative information you need to hear and understand.
The blind spot here is that you begin to think that it's as easy for others to talk candidly with you as it is for you to talk candidly with them.  NO.  It isn't.  You need to know what works for you to hear your company accurately  and what creates positive momentum for  people.  It's your job to make real conversation about your business easy and productive.  That's top on your job description as CEO.

5.  You just may be the dumbest person in the whole organization or the least able to learn.  the white noise that surrounds you is the roaring lack of real feedback of ability to know your impact and learn from it.  It is YOUR TASK TO ASK and to do it in such a way that it makes it easy for people to talk to you honestly.  And even then you must magnify the negative by a multiple of five and reduce the positive by a multiple of three.  Depending whether you ask.  If someone has the nerve to come with you on an important negative about you or the organization--then they have thought about it for at least three months, talked about it without least five others for corroboration and reached the point of the scare factor of talking with you weighs less than the day to day pain of the issue.  And this is true if you are the most approachable, open, tolerant CEO/  You position simply weighs too much.  and the positive is the same.  You may be quite wonderful.  In fact , it you are it's harder to say something positive to you. Awkward making.  If you are not, then the push to want to like the person in charge or the goodies that come from flattery are irresistible.  Still only a multiple of three because it is much easier than the negative.   It is your job to make real conversation about the business with you easy and productive..