The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [16]
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!
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