Back from a night on the road and the Wisdom of C.E.O.'s

What do you do when United cancels your flight from Philadelphia to Chicago, is unable to find a seat for you on another flight that evening and isn't really certain things will be sorted out in the morning? In my case I was already thinking of renting a car and driving home when I ran into two Abbott associates facing the same challenges.  So we drove from Philadelphia to Chicago via the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Ohio Tollway and Chicago Skyway, toiling through the toll booths, stopping at McDonald's and Starbucks, anyplace that had coffee and bathrooms and trading driving duties.

Yet I have perhaps the most daunting task yet to complete, obtaining a refund from United.

This morning, Sunday, in the NY Times Sunday Business section, there is an article excerpted from The Corner Office by Adam Bryant.  Bryant writes a weekly column for the paper under the same title. I suspect many of you read it.  The italicized comments come from my personal experience.

I'm only going to highlight the traits highlighted by Mr. Adams, traits it appears aren't not necessarily embedded in your genes. In other words, you don't have to be a a descendant of Abraham Lincoln to be a great corporate leader.  Whether you are a CEO of a Fortune 1000 company or not and the latter is most likely, you are CEO of something if only your own life.  I'd suggest that five traits that follow are valuable of you only lead your dog.

Passionate curiosity: relentless questioning.  These CEOs aren't necessarily the smartest people in the room nor do they need to be, but they are the best students and they know hot to ask the right questions.

"You learn from everybody," said Alan R. Mulally, chief executive of Ford Motor.  (Remember that the next time you activate your social force field on the airplane.)

Adams points out, "though chief executives are paid to have answers, their greatest contribution to their organizations may be asking the right questions."

"In business the big prizes are found when you can ask a question that challenges the corporate orthodoxy," said Andrew Cosslett, the CEO of the InterContinental Hotels Group.

And Mr. Adams adds, "for the furrow-brow seriousness you encounter in the business world, some of the most important advances come from asking, much like a persistent 5-year-old, the simplest questions."

Whenever I've moved from one job to another I've left a note behind for my successor that said, the worst place you can find yourself at any time of the day is in this office.  Working the floor, talking with product managers, eating in the cafeteria, traveling with your sales people, visiting your factory sites, traveling to your customers, showing up unannounced, dropping into meetings, showing an interest in the myriad of activities that insure your company is running each day - all of these make the greatest difference and serve to answer questions that you ask and ones you didn't consider. 


When I was leading a foreign affiliate, I used to hold staff meetings in remote parts of the country and invite local managers and sometimes sales people to attend.  I also held President Forums in cities far from headquarters.  Local employees were able to bring in unfunded business ideas. (We always funded something out of each and every meeting.)  And I learned about how my business was really working, from the ground up.

Battle-Hardened Confidence: locus of control or people's outlooks and beliefs about what leads to success and failure in their lives.  Do they blame failures on factors they can't control or do they believe they have the ability to shape events and circumstances by making the most of what they can control?  Here are five words that are "music to a manager's ears" - "Got it. I'm on it."

Think of this as the interview question that goes like: "Give me an example of some adverse situation you faced, and what did you do about it and what did you learn from it?"

Got it? Now get on it it.

Not to be confused with arrogance or self-deceit or self-absorption or misguided confidence.  It really is a blend of experience, street smarts, self awareness, self confidence, thoughtfulness, empathy and insight.  As one person once said, it is the person who walks in the room and says, "Ah, there you are, not, here I am."


The worst excesses are the ones that come from people who need you to know that they are important, and they are in charge.  Confidence, battle-hardened, or simply gained from years of experience, is best conveyed through actions, not words.

Team Smarts: companies increasingly operate through ad hoc teams.  Team smarts refers to the ability to recognize the players the team needs and how to bring them together around a common goal.  It's not the cliche' of "team player".  Team smarts are the rival and important partner of street smarts.

Teams are always a challenge.  Often they are a "team" of one or two doing the bulk of the work and there are always free riders - remember those graduate school study group grades; the ones where you stayed up all night to write the paper and the guy who always arrived late and left early got the same diploma?  Committees and teams are often hard to tell apart. I like to define a committee as a cul-de-sac down which a good idea is taken and slowly strangled.  It's been surmised that if Columbus had a committee, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria would still be tied to the dock.


Yet a good team - cross-functional and well led- can insure that all important viewpoints are considered, integrated and included in the final solution(s).  Executives need to check in on team and make sure they are functioning; not assume they are functioning. Teams are visible to all employees and they are rewarded visibly for good work. Regrettably, again, we appear to live in a world that seems more impressed with individual achievement and wants to reward it as such.  I can't think of a single achievement in my business career when I or anyone around me accomplished something on my/their own.  My accomplishments were enabled by a talented staff, talented employees and a supportive wife and family.  Keep that in mind the next time you want to put one person's name on a trophy.  



A Simple Mind Set: most senior executives want the same thing from people who present to them: be concise, get to the point, make it simple.

For those of you who follow this or know me at tall, you'll appreciate what Mr. Adams says about PowerPoint - lose the Power, get to the Point.

"I'd love to teach a course called 'The Idea'" said Dany Levy, founder of DailyCandy.com. "Which is, basically so you want to start a company, how's it going to work?  Let's figure it out: just a very practical plan, but not a business plan, because I feel like business plans now feel weighty and outdated."

Amen.

Or as I like to say, add value, not volume.  Yet time and time again, I was confronted with decks that could a Samurai sword couldn't penetrate.  And each time I wrung my hands over the amount of time spent preparing these massive volumes and how much time wasn't spent with customers or sales people or with families.  1 to 3 pages at the most.  What is your idea - one to two sentences.  It's a discipline to prepare and present to busy people, what you believe to be true and what the opportunity is to pursue that truth and what resources are needed to exploit that truth.

Fearlessness: are you comfortable being uncomfortable?  Do you like situations where there's no road map or compass?.....Is discomfort your comfort zone?

With the business world in seemingly endless turmoil, maintaining the status quo - even when things appear to be working well - is only going to put you behind the competition.

Over the years I referred to moving the bar up.  When you're at the top of the market, or the leader whatever performance metrics are important to your category, the competition is measuring what you did to get to the top and what you're doing now. The way to stay ahead of them is to force your organization to constantly challenge what's working, how it could be better - differently - and what needs to change regularly. Then when the competition arrives at where they think you are, they will have discovered where you were.


Teaching an organization to take risk is hard because we live in a world where nearly everyone has been punished for making a mistake instead of having the opportunity to learn from that mistake.  Many companies fall into the curse of the routine. Doing it the same way over and over again is rewarded de-facto because it is not punished.  And the competition will arrive to discover you unable to meet their assault.  You lose.