Most CEOs want to do what’s right for the company and themselves, but have a hard time fitting in the needs of the team most affected by their actions and decisions — their executive staff. We all have our CEO stories — the very good and the very ugly — and over the past 15 years I’ve had the opportunity to have a seat at the table working with many technology start-up CEOs to see how they either successfully, or not so successfully, manage their executive teams.
My experience indicates that tech CEOs spend most of their time on product and technology trends, and very little on the people side of the equation. In Silicon Valley, it’s all about the product. By making the mistake of not focusing on people management, they’re not empowering their team and therefore not getting the multiplier effect that would ripple throughout the organization when everyone from the top down is firing on all cylinders. Worse yet, demotivating their staff.
As a CEO, the executive team is your front line, the team managing the day-to-day operations as well as supporting you. As CEO, you should be thinking, “How can I be more effective in giving my management team what it needs so that I can get the most out of the organization?”
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE wrote, “ My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people.” Many CEOs in the start-up world will tell you that managing people in a start-up is different than a big company. I agree that there are differences in things like organizational structure, skill development and process. However, I have worked in both large companies and start-ups and the same core principles of people management apply. Good management is just good management.
It’s easy to look at other people and see their faults. It’s harder to look within and see your own. If you’re interested in how your actions affect your executive team and impact the multiplier effect within the organization, read on!
The following are my “Top Ten Rules” for executive team management for CEOs to keep in mind:
1. Communicate what you’re thinking and communicate clearly. In a recent Cult of Mac interview with Ron Johnson, former head of Apple Retail, he said, “The most misunderstood thing about Steve (Jobs) was that he was the best delegator I’ve ever met. Because he was so clear about what he believed in and what he liked, because he had such clarity of purpose, when you worked with Steve you could actually operate with a lot of freedom.” Understanding how the CEO thinks and what’s important to them facilitates the executive’s decision-making and ability to take action. It frees the executive to operate independently, act quickly and stay in line with the CEOs goals. You can’t be everywhere at once and you need to be certain that the ship is always going in the right direction whether you’re barking the orders to go left or not. Take the time to figure out your plans, goals, directives, and then communicate them. You will see a world of difference.
I’ve also seen chief executives be so vague that the team’s ability to operate is all but shut down. A former colleague related a story about a CEO who, in preparation for a board deck, would send out the slides, accompanied by a one- or two-word email asking for content for the deck. The group was all but paralyzed until they finally figured it out. It caused a lot of frustration and a lot of looking for jobs elsewhere! You may think everyone will know what you’re saying but take it from a long-time marketing executive — read that email twice before hitting send.
2. Respect your team. If you don’t respect someone, don’t hire him or her. I once worked for a CEO who respected his team and made mutual respect a key component of team culture, and the way that the executive team worked together was nothing short of glorious. After he left the company, the group’s cohesiveness fell apart rather quickly without the former CEOs insistence on mutual respect, and the exec team fell into the normal behaviors of politics and in-fighting. It was a good lesson that I have never forgotten.
3. Don’t bully. It’s embarrassing to you and your team. There was one instance of a COO who called his staff into a meeting to publicly humiliate one of their peers. The look of horror on everyone’s face and the embarrassment felt was palpable. Frustration gets the better of us all at times, but as the leader you need to demand better of yourself. If you have a beef, talk with the person one-on-one. If you don’t want to listen to me perhaps Napoleon Hill, author of "Think and Grow Rich", probably the best-selling business book of all time, can convince you. He wrote, "No person ever became a great leader of others until he first learned to lead himself, through self-control".
4. Make reasonable demands. Don’t send your people down a rabbit hole for the sake of the hunt. While you absolutely should set the bar high—after all, you lead a group of people who are overachievers and love a challenge—make sure their expenditure of energy is linked to an expectation of success. If you want people to jump high when you need it, be considerate of their time and they will indeed achieve new heights when it matters. A CEO I know who loved data would send his team to do obscure statistical analysis that had no relevance to the business, other than to satisfy his intellectual curiosity. People started running the other way when the requests were made in the hopes that they could avoid three days of unnecessary work.
Keep people focused on what’s important to the business and when it’s time to run the extra mile your team will be right with you.
5. Treat team members equally. It’s important to build relationships across your management team to really understand what’s going on in your company. There will always be people that you are closer to, but excluding one or some of the team does not help morale or the results of the business. When people are excluded they start retreating from you and the team, and you need everyone to work together to get the best results. In the same interview with Ron Johnson cited above, when asked about his relationship with Jobs, he said that one of the first things Jobs told him was, “I don’t want you to be an employee, I want you to be a friend.” There is a tendency to focus on a small group, but as the leader you need to treat everyone the same. At a minimum, you need to build a business relationship, get to know how the person thinks, and understand their business function. One CEO I know of extends this concept to the entire company. Each week he takes a different group of people throughout all levels of the company to lunch. He gets to know who people are, what they’re doing and any issues they’re facing. What a great way to build relationships and really know what’s going on from the ground level up. This CEO creates a feeling of being on the same team and a sense of equality by spending time with everyone and not favoring just a few.
6. Practice what you preach. CEOs often champion company values. But when a CEO doesn’t exemplify those values, it’s disruptive to a company culture and creates executive team cynicism because of the simple fact that it leads to a breakdown of trust. And trust is fundamental to leadership.
Company values are instrumental in creating a strong culture but only when everyone follows them. I have seen numerous situations where a CEO operates contrary to the values he sets forth for the rest of the company, and at the first opportunity the management team runs for the door. This is damaging, particularly when hard-won talent departs. Remember, people pay attention to your actions more than you think. From Stephen Covey, who wrote the popular The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”
7. Always be transparent — not just when it suits your purpose. Once people discover agendas that are hidden or differ from the stated direction, it leads to distrust and a breakdown of your effectiveness. I worked for one CEO where, whether the news was good or bad, it was out in the open. The relationship with his team was an inclusive one that produced a powerful esprit de corps.
8. Put your personal issues and ego aside during work hours. CEOs can easily fall into the trap of using their position to advance their own standing among their peers and within their community. In limited cases this can contribute a halo effect that can benefit the company; otherwise, do it on your own time and money.
9. You don’t always have to be the smartest person in the room. Everyone knows you’re smart — after all, you’re the CEO. When the CEO dominates the conversation, it stops other people from expressing their views. Let other people shine, listen to their opinions — you might even be amazed. I worked for a CEO who absolutely had to demonstrate his superiority at every turn. People hated to be in meetings with him and would do their best to eliminate him from all but the meetings where his attendance was required. Some great stuff came out of those clandestine meetings and a strong level of camaraderie developed among the team as they worked together to get things done. Too bad he missed all that. He had a great team and never really knew it. In "Think and Grow Rich," Hill writes that it's not a coincidence that history is filled with tyrants and dictators being overthrown. The most successful leaders work in harmony with their team, not in dominion over them.
10. Be kind. Top-level managers are still people. Everyone needs a little praise or act of kindness once in a while. The C- or VP-level is not expecting accolades at every turn, nor should they. However, when a job is well done, recognition goes a long way.
No one is perfect. Your job is to lead and build an effective, vibrant organization that exceeds your goals. Getting better at working with your executive team can go a long way toward creating a company and culture where people are excited by what they do, operations run smoothly, and your team is happy to come to work.
A closing thought from one of the best basketball players and team leaders in sports history: “Earn your leadership every day.” –Michael Jordan
My experience indicates that tech CEOs spend most of their time on product and technology trends, and very little on the people side of the equation. In Silicon Valley, it’s all about the product. By making the mistake of not focusing on people management, they’re not empowering their team and therefore not getting the multiplier effect that would ripple throughout the organization when everyone from the top down is firing on all cylinders. Worse yet, demotivating their staff.
As a CEO, the executive team is your front line, the team managing the day-to-day operations as well as supporting you. As CEO, you should be thinking, “How can I be more effective in giving my management team what it needs so that I can get the most out of the organization?”
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE wrote, “ My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people.” Many CEOs in the start-up world will tell you that managing people in a start-up is different than a big company. I agree that there are differences in things like organizational structure, skill development and process. However, I have worked in both large companies and start-ups and the same core principles of people management apply. Good management is just good management.
It’s easy to look at other people and see their faults. It’s harder to look within and see your own. If you’re interested in how your actions affect your executive team and impact the multiplier effect within the organization, read on!
The following are my “Top Ten Rules” for executive team management for CEOs to keep in mind:
1. Communicate what you’re thinking and communicate clearly. In a recent Cult of Mac interview with Ron Johnson, former head of Apple Retail, he said, “The most misunderstood thing about Steve (Jobs) was that he was the best delegator I’ve ever met. Because he was so clear about what he believed in and what he liked, because he had such clarity of purpose, when you worked with Steve you could actually operate with a lot of freedom.” Understanding how the CEO thinks and what’s important to them facilitates the executive’s decision-making and ability to take action. It frees the executive to operate independently, act quickly and stay in line with the CEOs goals. You can’t be everywhere at once and you need to be certain that the ship is always going in the right direction whether you’re barking the orders to go left or not. Take the time to figure out your plans, goals, directives, and then communicate them. You will see a world of difference.
I’ve also seen chief executives be so vague that the team’s ability to operate is all but shut down. A former colleague related a story about a CEO who, in preparation for a board deck, would send out the slides, accompanied by a one- or two-word email asking for content for the deck. The group was all but paralyzed until they finally figured it out. It caused a lot of frustration and a lot of looking for jobs elsewhere! You may think everyone will know what you’re saying but take it from a long-time marketing executive — read that email twice before hitting send.
2. Respect your team. If you don’t respect someone, don’t hire him or her. I once worked for a CEO who respected his team and made mutual respect a key component of team culture, and the way that the executive team worked together was nothing short of glorious. After he left the company, the group’s cohesiveness fell apart rather quickly without the former CEOs insistence on mutual respect, and the exec team fell into the normal behaviors of politics and in-fighting. It was a good lesson that I have never forgotten.
3. Don’t bully. It’s embarrassing to you and your team. There was one instance of a COO who called his staff into a meeting to publicly humiliate one of their peers. The look of horror on everyone’s face and the embarrassment felt was palpable. Frustration gets the better of us all at times, but as the leader you need to demand better of yourself. If you have a beef, talk with the person one-on-one. If you don’t want to listen to me perhaps Napoleon Hill, author of "Think and Grow Rich", probably the best-selling business book of all time, can convince you. He wrote, "No person ever became a great leader of others until he first learned to lead himself, through self-control".
4. Make reasonable demands. Don’t send your people down a rabbit hole for the sake of the hunt. While you absolutely should set the bar high—after all, you lead a group of people who are overachievers and love a challenge—make sure their expenditure of energy is linked to an expectation of success. If you want people to jump high when you need it, be considerate of their time and they will indeed achieve new heights when it matters. A CEO I know who loved data would send his team to do obscure statistical analysis that had no relevance to the business, other than to satisfy his intellectual curiosity. People started running the other way when the requests were made in the hopes that they could avoid three days of unnecessary work.
Keep people focused on what’s important to the business and when it’s time to run the extra mile your team will be right with you.
5. Treat team members equally. It’s important to build relationships across your management team to really understand what’s going on in your company. There will always be people that you are closer to, but excluding one or some of the team does not help morale or the results of the business. When people are excluded they start retreating from you and the team, and you need everyone to work together to get the best results. In the same interview with Ron Johnson cited above, when asked about his relationship with Jobs, he said that one of the first things Jobs told him was, “I don’t want you to be an employee, I want you to be a friend.” There is a tendency to focus on a small group, but as the leader you need to treat everyone the same. At a minimum, you need to build a business relationship, get to know how the person thinks, and understand their business function. One CEO I know of extends this concept to the entire company. Each week he takes a different group of people throughout all levels of the company to lunch. He gets to know who people are, what they’re doing and any issues they’re facing. What a great way to build relationships and really know what’s going on from the ground level up. This CEO creates a feeling of being on the same team and a sense of equality by spending time with everyone and not favoring just a few.
6. Practice what you preach. CEOs often champion company values. But when a CEO doesn’t exemplify those values, it’s disruptive to a company culture and creates executive team cynicism because of the simple fact that it leads to a breakdown of trust. And trust is fundamental to leadership.
Company values are instrumental in creating a strong culture but only when everyone follows them. I have seen numerous situations where a CEO operates contrary to the values he sets forth for the rest of the company, and at the first opportunity the management team runs for the door. This is damaging, particularly when hard-won talent departs. Remember, people pay attention to your actions more than you think. From Stephen Covey, who wrote the popular The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”
7. Always be transparent — not just when it suits your purpose. Once people discover agendas that are hidden or differ from the stated direction, it leads to distrust and a breakdown of your effectiveness. I worked for one CEO where, whether the news was good or bad, it was out in the open. The relationship with his team was an inclusive one that produced a powerful esprit de corps.
8. Put your personal issues and ego aside during work hours. CEOs can easily fall into the trap of using their position to advance their own standing among their peers and within their community. In limited cases this can contribute a halo effect that can benefit the company; otherwise, do it on your own time and money.
9. You don’t always have to be the smartest person in the room. Everyone knows you’re smart — after all, you’re the CEO. When the CEO dominates the conversation, it stops other people from expressing their views. Let other people shine, listen to their opinions — you might even be amazed. I worked for a CEO who absolutely had to demonstrate his superiority at every turn. People hated to be in meetings with him and would do their best to eliminate him from all but the meetings where his attendance was required. Some great stuff came out of those clandestine meetings and a strong level of camaraderie developed among the team as they worked together to get things done. Too bad he missed all that. He had a great team and never really knew it. In "Think and Grow Rich," Hill writes that it's not a coincidence that history is filled with tyrants and dictators being overthrown. The most successful leaders work in harmony with their team, not in dominion over them.
10. Be kind. Top-level managers are still people. Everyone needs a little praise or act of kindness once in a while. The C- or VP-level is not expecting accolades at every turn, nor should they. However, when a job is well done, recognition goes a long way.
No one is perfect. Your job is to lead and build an effective, vibrant organization that exceeds your goals. Getting better at working with your executive team can go a long way toward creating a company and culture where people are excited by what they do, operations run smoothly, and your team is happy to come to work.
A closing thought from one of the best basketball players and team leaders in sports history: “Earn your leadership every day.” –Michael Jordan