Seen; CEO Flaws and Failings: 10 Reasons Why, & Their Powerful Relevance to YOU!
I have been tremendously inspired by many of the CEO's with whom I have worked. Their great attributes have been the subject or reference in many of my articles. So much of what I have learned in best practices, I have learned from them. There have also been cautionary lessons of certain tendencies that can trip up or gravely hurt a CEO's effectiveness.
- Why CEO's are important to study is that the visibility, responsibility, and stakes of their leadership role are extremely high and public. Their shortcomings are magnified and impact stakeholders on a large scale (investors, employees, vendors/suppliers, customers, the community, and so forth).
- Here are vignettes about their flaw, the hurt it caused, and the lesson you may draw from each.
- Apply this as pertinent to yourself, or to any leader, unit and group of people. The scope may be smaller but the principles are the same! You can learn a lot from CEO mistakes!
1. Vision-less
A central role for the lead chief executive is being a catalyst for vision formation and the lead articulator of that vision to all stakeholders, all the time. Some CEO's deep down are cynical about statements and articulations of any kind. They have seen the poor jobs others have done, and written off the entire subject. They replace it with what they would defend as "nuts and bolts, meat and potatoes, real-world objectives", like 15% sales growth and 10% net profits. But without having an actual, wide, high, and long vision, that is shared and owned by all people of the company passionately, there is no fire lit, no greater cause rallied, no exciting championship to pursue, no wonderful benefits to bestow on the customers, markets, and industries, nor fulfillment of employees and vendors beyond making widgets and earning a check. The CEO's lack of vision will erode the energy and spirit of an organization, causing drift, then demise.
2. Opportunistic/Non-Strategic
These leaders are like a ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel, blown from gust to gust by the latest hot opportunity. Plans and budgets? They are a tokenistic exercise at a moment in time. They are increasingly irrelevant as each new opportunity displaces priorities and plans that may have been set at the beginning of the year. Strategy? That is the airey-fairy, ivory tower psycho-babel of the guys that run up the hours and the consulting bills and give you not much more than you told them. So these CEO's feel justified to "not go there" to that irrelevant strategy place. Words like responsive and emergent are where this CEO goes, like a sugar-high toddler chasing deal after deal with no overall, coherent plan. People get tired of this lack of focus, of being jerked around all the time, of every new project being a "1-A" priority. They get disappointed, disenfranchised, burned out, and leave. The company is left in a drifting churn. The CEO's lack of a clear plan held to with disciplined focus, but also reasonable tuning as new information informs, can over time destroy a company.
3. Politics, Not Performance/Results
These kinds of leaders are dangerous to stakeholders. They are driven by pleasing the Board of Directors at all costs, sometimes at the expense of their own people. They are big on preserving and increasing their power, which is a zero-sum game to them: "For me to gain power, he or she must lose power." Prime energies are spent on slick presentations or parlor positioning, where political machinations, like a spider's web, are carefully spun over Chair/Board sensibilities. So this person's energies are not primarily in optimizing the rate and timing of profitable results, through building an incredible team of highly motivated achievers, rallied around a compelling vision. This person will then jockey to move to another company before their poor state of managing business affairs is exposed -- how they have been a very poor leader and manager, and how the customer, business and the people have greatly suffered as a result! They would be a marvelous addition in your competitor's company!
4. Uncommunicative
A CEO can be smart, have a heart of gold for his people, have a vision for the company and a strategy to carry it out, and be performance-driven, but if they are inaccessible, non-verbal, a non-relator, isolated and "incommunicado" his or her direct reports and the company itself are like vessels adrift at sea, and the employee population has absolutely no clue what is the direction and condition of their company. Great CEO's communicate 2-way with everyone regularly, are accessible, wander around when they can, and clearly sketch out the vision, the plan, and the desired results. The leadership team is on the same page. The employees are crystal clear about what the company is trying to do, and that the leaders care about their role in the big picture. So communications is about conveying and hearing the most important information between all stakeholders, It is not enough to be smart, clear, and caring about the company's future, present, people, and stakeholders. Without communications it does not EXIST in the hearts and minds of others! Their perception is their reality!
5. Dysfunctional Culture
This is not only when a company does not have clear, stated, understood values and a work environment with clear, aspired-to norms of professional behavior. Inadequacy is when no genuine effort is made to identify real values and culture and incorporate that into the framework of every person's thinking, speaking, and doing in the company. When the leader and leadership are skeptical about the "values and culture thing", that means what will be,will be, ("Que sera, sera" -- values- and culture-passive) whatever that is. So murky and inconsistent is a given. Lack of inspiration and passion about a special, attainable experience will fill the void where there could be something better, and angst, frustration, and disappointment will enshroud the workplace environment like a damp London fog. People will speak with their feet, finding a more fulfilling, ennobling place to work! If you don't CARE, it's not THERE. What an inditement on the failure of leadership!
6. Pride
Hubris is an affliction that spares no man or woman! Pride in the CEO is a very damaging and corrosive element, because it unilaterally shuts down everyone at every time, or brings the worst reactions and responses out of everyone else. This kind of pride of course is not the good kind, of being proud of our people, our customers, our products and services -- everyone and everything else. It is the unmanaged ego that must, likely through its own brokenness and insecurity, trumpet out its supremacy of thought, word, and deed. After getting frustrated, people just withdraw, disengage, protect themselves, avoid conflicts, and the bringing up of negative information, and overall shut down. That is pride's effect -- utterly alienating! And in the position of CEO, that is a self-inflicted wound. Left unaddressed, that wound may prove fatal. And the problem with pride is he/she shoots messengers of truth for sport! The human toll of trampled over people, suppliers, investors, customers, and mainly employees is a travesty! The presence of this dread disease warrants immediate attention and action by those ultimately responsible. For the underling, if it looks protracted or unending, get out -- protect yourself! It is the "going Postal of leadership style." Never underestimate its instant-casualty capability! One time a CEO hired me to do strategic planning, but in the interviews I was told by his key 4 people that they were all resigning next week because of his tyranny. I had no choice other than to advise the Chairman, because the entire company and all stakeholders were at risk. The tyrant's removal saved the company.
7. Inflexibility
These latter 6 are often essentially borne out of the first 6. Inflexibility is "disciplined focus" on steroids. Disciplined focus is great. The unwillingness to bend, tweak, adjust, refine, tune -- that is illogical, unreasonable, even foolish. Yet we see it all the time. Large companies have elevated inflexibility to an art form, with their very own self-justifying yet ridiculous vocabulary, like "continuity", "consistency", and "repeatability." These concepts, of course, are great. It is what they can mean that is bad. Consistency sometimes means " if you veer one iota from this approach you are in trouble. "Continuity" means " Don't even think of adjusting this model. It is the ultimate model, paradigm, approach, construct!" Where DID common sense go? How about having a clear plan and direction, and then as you move into the year you make necessary adjustments in time and content based upon pertinent, central new information? You are "tight-loose." Not inflexible, neither spineless jello. It could be so simple, but not for these Patton-like CEO's. Old school, battle-hardened, and locked in (and proud of it...oops; see #6).
8. Micro-managing
You have seen them in many places many times. They may have a heart of gold, but they simply cannot let go. Is this borne out of a sense that no one can do it better, or a love of the nuts and bolts? There could be a lot of reasons. It is opposite of the empowerment model -- get the right people in the right positions with the right tools/support, and let them run, let them shine! Maintain oversight via metrics and mentoring, mainly through the CEO's direct reports and so on down the organization. CEO's/CXO's/ managers as micro-managers essentially scream to their world that everyone else around them is incapable, incompetent, and unsuited except themselves. It looks obvious seen this starkly. It is often very subtle -- the constant questions, the continuous adjusting, interference, reviews, and so forth. The empowerment model does the opposite: appoints, prepares, lets go, supports, measures, coaches!
9. Not Delegating
The non-identical twin of her brother Micro-Management, instead of holding on in the conference room, she holds on in private. What is her domain stays her domain. Often, this person loves or finds security in these known, mastered skills and activities, and to delegate is to forfeit their comfort zone! But not to delegate screams this subliminal signal: "You are not to be quickly or proactively raised up to grow and develop to handle greater responsibilities. Neither will I, the CEO, for that matter!" The best CEO's do the exact opposite, they let go upon recognition that it is responsible to do so because the person delegated to can handle the responsibility, AND there is a system of metrics and coaching to shepherd this person on the path of betterment after so doing! Hire capable people (often in the CEO's case a great COO), train and develop them, let go along the way, move on to more strategic, bigger responsibilities, and constantly work yourself out of a job.
10. Distracted By The CEO Lifestyle or Other Duties
It can distracting being the lead dog on the sled: the scenery that is spread before the leader can be a distracting panorama that causes straying from the optimal trail. It is understandable, but not excusable. It may be just getting stretched too thin with too many good, other, non-company Boards, obligations, and activities. Employees see and sense the void, particularly if the leader does not have a strong team taking care of day-to-day operations. Over time, all the stakeholders feel it. The problem with that is that you can lose the hearts, minds, and respect of your people, and therefore eventually their best efforts, productivity, and your company's best performance. The atmosphere can grow toxically cynical. Words may not be admissibly spoken, but in their place will be the knowing look when gazing over at that vacant chair at the head of the conference room table at meeting's start. The personal impact to the CEO often is about a lessening of the intensity, or diluted concentration -- toward the company's stakeholders and lessened confidence back from them in return.
A single, inoculating dose is good for me (for sure) and I believe any professional/leader to ingest down from time to time. The side of the Rx bottle reads like this:
ONE LEADERSHIP OUNCE OF THIS, TAKEN TO HEART, WILL 1) STRENGTHEN LONG-RANGE VISION; 2) BUILD CORPORATE STRATEGY; 3) KILL POLITICAL CARCINOGENS/BUILD PERFORMANCE-ORIENTATION; 4) INDUCE PROACTIVE COMMUNICATIONS; 5) FOSTER AN INTENTIONAL, HEALTHY CULTURE; 6) RELEASE LATENT HUMILITY; 7) INCREASE FAR-RANGING FLEXIBILITY; 8) REPLACE MICRO-MANAGEMENT WITH MACRO-LEADERSHIP; 9) RELEASE DELEGATED, SUPPORTED EMPOWERMENT AND 10) HEIGHTEN INSPIRED AND GENUINE SERVANT-LEADERSHIP FOR THE BETTERMENT OF ALL STAKEHOLDERS.
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