What people want in a CEO

I recently posed a question on LinkedIn and my network came back with some very interesting answers. What makes a good chief executive?

The most popular responses fell into the communications category. This is fascinating to me. Perhaps it is only anecdotal, but my recollection is that we've seen dozens of surveys about how employees want more communication. So, no real surprise there, other than some execs still aren't getting it. Communicate with your people, people.

I also look at this from an organizational behavior perspective. How does your organization function if you're not communicating? Answer is, you are communicating, but perhaps not what you want. Many companies have long term goals or strategic plans - excellent! But do all their employees know their fit into that plan? I believe that every employee from the CEO to the janitor has a vial (literally life giving) role to play in that organization. With out them what would have happened? Would their work have been done by another, would the company have lost money, what? Each person has value. If they don't, then why are they there. If they don't know their value and their place in the strategic plan then chances are they are not performing optimally. Read, not meeting strategic targets, or making money.

So, as I see it, it is up to a chief executive to arrange for adequate communications plans so that all employees know their role in an organization. What's the mission, vision, values... Often times these are covered in a new hire orientation. Other times, their just understood, or are they. A wise man once said, "If common sense were common, why don't they teach a class in it?" We need to be careful about assumptions. Good to Great author Jim Collins speaks about a Hedgehog concept and I couldn't agree more, though I've used different words to describe decision making. In my language, what happens in a struck by lightening or hit by a bus scenario? Are employees, all employees sufficiently aware of the direction they should take, without asking? This is after all the basic definition of organization, being able to accomplish more as a group than an individual could by themselves. But too often, we see ego, not values, common cause or direction leading. Cross purposes define silos and infighting, all to the competitive disadvantage of not just an organization but to an economy.

Sure people want job stability, good livable wages, benefits, but they also want to contribute to something larger than themselves, to know that they belong to something better, something bigger than they are alone. A good CEO challenges every employee to stretch, to do just a bit more, to grow, to reach, to strive, to belong. A good CEO communicates and is a role model, forgives and learns, makes the hard decisions, and listens.

Unions and the Era of Warm Bodies

Pretty close to 100 out of 100 Human Resources professionals will likely tell you that on the battle lines of Union vs. Management they (the HR person) are on the side of the table of management. But for educational purposes, I like to look at things from a different perspective, and frequently try to take the side of the opposition or a third party, to add perspective, knowledge and hopefully some additional leverage to my views and ultimately improve my outcome. It seems to me that the classical battle lines need a serious revamping and that this form of adversarial relationship has severely sub-optimized the employment market in many cases.

Please don't get the idea that I am taking a side here. Let's think of this particular blog as a blog for all seasons, from an outside perspective, in an attempt to create a bigger game; a better opportunity for all.

When I think about the many safety related issues that spawned excellent and needless to say legitimate concerns and unions over the years I think business owners and Management should simply be ashamed. The era of treating employees like so much chattel, like a commodity, like they are not even people is rapidly drawing to a close.

For too many years in too many different industries I've heard a simply grotesque phrase tossed about lightly "warm bodies". Before anyone gets too excited warm bodies have nothing to do with the adult entertainment industry. Warm bodies are more closely aligned to zombies than porn stars. For example, some manager might say, "we need to get somebody in that position yesterday; so get me some 'warm body' to do the job". Tragic! But, I'll blog more about strategic HR management and hiring practices soon.

So, how do we get to warm bodies and away from human beings, and employees? I think this is a much more complex issue than I can cover in one article, but lets begin. When People (employee side first here) accept a suboptimal position as acceptable rather than as interim, you begin to perpetuate that suboptimal situation. From the Employer's point of view, when we fail to look at bigger pictures, and are fine with robots (we should really be thinking about technical automation) we lose sight of the people. So, this is something of a classical Game Theory problem highly reminiscent of the Prisoner's Dilemma with each side seeking to maximize their own outcome. But what if both parties cooperated, and the outcome of the cooperation was that the nature of business, the nature of the game, changed from zero sum to non-zero sum? In other words, by working together we can each get more, not just for ourself, but for the other as well. There are some wonderful books out there like Getting to Yes, that speak to topics like this.

But lets talk about people. Let's face it, the number one problem facing most employers and Human Resource professionals today and for the foreseeable future is the recruiting and retention of qualified talent. If you need warm bodies, you're basically out of the ballgame already, and need to think about writing your business's obituary or consider a personal exit strategy and go sailing somewhere.

I've frequently come across the situation where employers are wondering about an appropriate recognition, reward for their employees. And this too will be a future topic, but let me simplify a complex discussion and suggest just asking people what they want. Too often my research has indicated that employees are seeking, and are motivated by something simple, easy and relatively inexpensive especially when compared to alternatives the employer was currently considering.

Just talk with your people. Ask them what it is that they want, what would make them stay, what would make them thrive and do great things for your organization.