THIS IS SO APPEALING. And it’s so easy. There are just a few things you need to do to create your own executive bubble. Start with your surroundings. Build your own bubble. There’s nothing like a physically isolated fortress to keep the riffraff away, so get yourself a great big office in some remote corner of the most remote executive floor and then shut the door.
I’ve been told of one rather colorful CEO who practically built his own Taj Mahal at corporate headquarters. Other executives shared the floor, but one entire side was carved out for him and he barricaded himself deep within. His suite was protected by its own set of heavy plate-glass doors, which opened into a waiting room guarded by a receptionist on an elevated dais in front of another set of wooden doors. Behind those doors was the CEO’s actual office, an exotic, decidedly weird space, with dramatic Brazilian artwork, New Age background music, and the aroma of burning scented candles. A wall of TV monitors completed the scene. Imagine what a stressful impact this CEO’s altar to his ego might have had on a middle-level field executive coming into headquarters to discuss a bit of bad news! One look and there is just no way he’d have the nerve to say a word.
Once protected, never leave your bubble except to visit other people who have their own bubbles. For heaven’s sake, don’t answer your own phone. Ever. Don’t even find out where the copy machine is located. Above all, don’t walk around the headquarters offices and talk to people. I would wander around on various floors and just drop in on people, introduce myself, ask how they were doing, what they were doing, what we might be doing better.
Of course, if you want to be isolated, don’t do this. It’s a complete waste of time. People invariably burden you with some detail of the daily business that you’re better off not knowing. Like their names. Don’t bother learning the names of employees. They might leave, and then you’ve wasted all that effort. (I read once of an eccentric upper-class British matron who never bothered to learn the servants’ names. Down through several changes of butlers, she simply called each new one “Butler.” The maid, “Maid.” Gardener, “Gardener.” She would have made an excellent, isolated CEO.)
Unfortunately for those who wish to remain isolated, the history of most successful businesses runs counter to this disposition. In fact, one of the traits of many of the legendary builders of business was that they had an uncanny ability to know and relate to their employees at every level. Dwayne Wallace, who built the Cessna Aircraft Company through the 1960s and 1970s, was reputed to be able to walk the assembly line of the Wichita plant and not only know every one of about three thousand employees by name but also know something about their families. This hands-on, personal touch is no doubt impossible in a global operation today, but it is certainly a worthy and attainable goal within a fairly large headquarters staff. But if you want to be isolated, forget it.
If you want to be even more thoroughly isolated, hire a good personal caterer and follow my strict isolationist diet.
Always eat lunch with a few close members of your immediate staff in the executive dining room. One particularly arrogant CEO followed my strict isolationist diet religiously. Every single day he ate a catered lunch on the top floor of his headquarters building with just his top executives. The dissatisfaction boiling up on the floors below and among the stockholders was not allowed to interfere with his digestive process. To his credit, this executive did succeed in increasing revenues, but his management style did more long-term harm than good, alienating employees, customers, and stockholders. Even if the top executives who lunched with him daily were the only true believers in what he was trying to accomplish, simple common sense tells you that these happy few would not, ultimately, be enough to get the job done.
An imperious style is usually counterproductive. How the leaders of a business relate to the workforce does matter. Being isolated alienates, breeds rumors, and, after a time, even revolt. But if you want to fail, it’s a winning strategy.
For further isolation—surround yourself with a collection of advisers and staff who are paid to think you are wonderful! That’s their only job!
Getting the truth about anything can be difficult because you have to wend your way through layers of managers, each of whom might be tempted to bring you his own version of the truth. Therefore, avoid the process entirely. Don’t step out into the marketplace. Don’t even go out into the hall. Get all your information, preferably in summary form, from your trusted staff. They are there to tell you what you need to hear and to filter out what you don’t need to bother about. And even if you look in the mirror and know that you’re not totally wonderful, or if you have a spouse who has the annoying habit of reminding you that you are mortal, do you want to hear that from people at work? Certainly not. Keep them at a distance.
Cowed directors will also help enhance your isolation and probably your pay package. Even with stricter regulations regarding independent directors, whatever they are, it’s not too hard to remind them of why they should be grateful to you. With cowed directors and solid isolation from the stockholders, you should really have no trouble with your pay, but a word of caution. Shareholders and various government entities are taking a harder look at top executives’ tying pay to performance. Goodness! What a mistake! Even If you fail miserably, you should not be punished for your mistakes. In fact, your first order of business, before you ever do any work, is to make sure that you are compensated royally no matter what happens to the business. Keep any and all potential critics out of your way.
“It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.”
—Dick Cavett
“Think not those faithful who praise thy words and actions but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”
—Socrates
PUT OUT A SIGN: DON’T MAKE THE BOSS MAD. BRING ME NO BAD NEWS.
Adolf Hitler did this rather well. His secretary, Martin Bormann, quickly learned to bring the führer only pleasant tidings. Indeed, in any organization you can usually find some “good news” and someone who will happily bring it to you if it ushers him or her into the inner luncheon circle. On the other hand, I’ve personally found that it pays to be paranoid, getting bad news to the top quickly so that you can quickly take steps to avert disaster.
Charles Kettering, the great engineering genius who helped steer General Motors during its glory years, said, “Don’t bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.” I don’t know that I’d go quite that far, but the simple truth is that all progress in an organization has to, by definition, stem from the effort to solve a problem, which means, of course, that you have to know about the problem before you can get to the bottom of it.
You have to work at it.
When I would visit parts of the Coca-Cola world, the local managers would often meet me at the airport and take me to the three local customers where Coke was a huge success. But I wanted to see stores that were not on the list and would sometimes just stop the car and jump out to go into an outlet. I also wanted to sit down and have direct conversations with employees. I’d say, “Here’s what’s on my mind. What’s on your mind?” I think I usually got pretty straight answers because I’d often hear the same concerns from a number of people.
It’s instructive that during World War II, Winston Churchill created a special office whose sole duty was to bring him bad news. He wanted the unvarnished truth, no matter what it was. Hitler, on the other hand, thought he was still winning the war until quite late in the conflict. If you want to be an effective leader, you have to find ways to break out of the isolation and bunker mentality that many bosses find so tempting.
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
—John le Carré
CREATE A CLIMATE OF FEAR. It’s so easy. It’s built into every high office with the power to hire and fire, and it can happen without your even knowing it. I remember when I was in my first job that involved managing a number of salesmen for Butternut Coffee. Periodically they were supposed to come in and report to me and discuss the situation in their region. There was one salesman who was very, very good. One of the best, yet he never came into Omaha to see me. There was always some excuse: He was sick, there was an emergency with some customer, his car had thrown a rod—something.
Only by accident did I learn that even though he was performing very well, he was afraid of me. He was intimidated by just the process of coming into the headquarters and taking the elevator up to my office. I changed this dynamic by going to him, picking him up, and bringing him back with me to Omaha. He had to get to know that there was nothing to be afraid of, from me, or from the headquarters building. This individual went on to a highly successful career.
There is a great deal of difference between an environment of creative tension in an organization and a climate of fear. Creating a good working environment is hard work. It requires sensitivity to the mood and spirit of an organization, but it pays off. It’s no accident that many firms consistently listed on Fortune’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America are also consistently among those delivering the best shareholder return.
An environment of fear, on the other hand, requires so little effort I really think it must be quite tempting. You don’t have to understand anything to inculcate it. Just scream, throw tantrums. Dress down people who make mistakes in front of other people. Embarrass them. Be rude. Act like a two-year-old. Sadly, there are plenty of managers who do. They’re even proud of the outrageous demands they make on their underlings—proud of treating the help badly. In my opinion not one of them is “creative” enough to justify it, even if they are editors of fashion magazines or directors of motion pictures or one of the hottest new turnaround artists in industry. Bad behavior is bad behavior and inexcusable. We all can remember times when we lost our cool, where we have been unfair, but in each instance we diminished ourselves. I can’t deny that sometimes you’ll get short-term success and even publicity.
In the early 1990s, the media heaped loads of praise on the newest tough turnaround hero, Al Dunlap, aka “Chainsaw Al,” the self-styled “Rambo in Pinstripes.” He fired a flock of people and pared every expense to the bone. BusinessWeek pointed out that Al had anointed himself as America’s best CEO. Quite a few business reporters seemed to buy the hype. That was just before he drove a fine company called Sunbeam into the ground in 1998.
To completely isolate yourself, put yourself first in all things. When there is credit to be taken, take all of it. When there is blame to be taken, take none of it. If the spotlight of public attention turns toward your company in a friendly way, leap into that light and leave your employees and associates and everyone else who might have given you a helping hand way off in the wings somewhere. After you have taken all the credit for some corporate accomplishment, in the unlikely event that you harbor some feelings of guilt, you can easily assuage those by sending your hardest workers a nice Christmas poinsettia or a holiday turkey. Small engraved crystal paperweights with the worker’s name and a “thank you” over your signature can also be quite touching.
Hogging the limelight is not an absolute guarantee of failure, but it does contribute to that extreme isolation that can make great success very difficult.
Among some of the most successful people I’ve known well and worked with I’ve found there is often a self-effacing quality—an avoidance of the spotlight. If you read Warren Buffett’s annual letters to his shareholders you can’t cover more than a couple of paragraphs before you find him lavishing praise and great credit on someone else. Likewise, Herbert A. Allen of Allen & Company is similarly eager to make others in his company the stars of any favorable publicity. It is only when things go wrong or are not as good as they might have been that both of these men take center stage to assume responsibility.
In all walks of your life, talk only to those who agree with you, preferably to other CEOs. At conferences and board meetings—in the clubs you join and the parties you attend—find like-minded, well-off birds of a feather. Look to your peers for ideas and opinions, political viewpoints, and especially rates of pay. In my own experience, I found that I consistently had to make an extra effort to broaden my acquaintances. This isn’t as easy as it might sound.
If you’ve got some lofty title on your door, the crowd of those who will disagree with you thins out pretty rapidly. That’s why I like the story about John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. He was a man of firm convictions and he was a winner. But in his sixteenth season, while he’d made it to the NCAA tournament every year, he had yet to win a championship. In 1963, Jerry Norman, Wooden’s highly opinionated assistant coach, began to question absolutely everything Wooden had been doing. That was heresy—tantamount to fomenting revolution, yet Norman somehow persuaded Wooden to apply virtually all new tactics to his game. The upshot was that UCLA won the 1964 NCAA title and went on to win nine of the next eleven tournaments. Wooden subsequently said, “Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.”
That’s one of the reasons I am a strong believer in management teams. When teams of leaders complement and balance one another (as in the cases of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at Berkshire Hathaway, Tom Murphy and Dan Burke at CapCities, or Frank Wells and Michael Eisner at Disney), then one person’s shortcomings can often be offset by another’s strengths. But when there is only room for one dominant personality in the room, then watch out because what he or she is that’s what the company is; and if he or she isn’t enough, then the company is doomed.
Watch out for bright lights that surround themselves with dim bulbs!
I was very fortunate at Coca-Cola in that I had several very, very bright top executives working for me who would not hesitate to tell me they thought I was not only wrong but dead wrong! I also had some strong-minded secretaries. They were so nervy they would sometimes bring letters back to me with a sweet smile and that marvelous expression my high school paper’s editor used to use: “Are you sure you want to say this?” Usually I didn’t. That’s the wonderful thing about letters versus e-mail. You have time to think. More on that later.
Assume the whole world lives as you do. Hubert Humphrey once suggested that every member of Congress and every high public official should be required to take public transportation once a week so they would know how the world really lives. This should also apply to top business leaders. It helps to remember the old adage: “I may be the CEO at the office, but I take out the garbage at home.”
Some old-timers in the company once told me about a third-generation Coca-Cola bottler from New England who came from an old aristocratic family. He’d probably never even been inside the plant—probably hadn’t even tasted a Coke in years. Nevertheless, he felt qualified to question the company’s wisdom in advertising on the radio on late Sunday afternoons. “No one is listening to the radio on Sunday afternoons,” he said. “Everyone is out playing polo.” That’s pure isolation! That’s the way to keep your own self foremost in mind and completely lose touch with your customers, employees, and shareholders. And best of all—you don’t even know it!
If you follow Commandment Three and effectively isolate yourself, you will not only not know what you don’t know about your business, but you will remain supremely and serenely confident that what you do know is right. Isolation, carried to its most extreme form, tends to breed a sense of almost divine right. People like Henry Ford and Sewell Avery and a host of the managers of some of the highly successful enterprises that we mentioned such as Xerox and IBM became convinced that they were not only right, but even more deadly, they began to believe, at times anyway, that they could do no wrong. When the encyclicals coming out of a corporate headquarters proclaim, “We can do no wrong, we know best!” watch out because the leaders of the business are advancing confidently into the tantalizing allure of my next commandment.