A Team Player Who Leads
Have you managed to make your CEO redundant?
If you are a CEO and you are reading this, don’t worry – CEOs are SUPPOSED to be redundant! If you are working under a CEO, stop sniggering! You stand to accrue great benefits if you make your CEO redundant.
I remember sharing a part of my vision for the team during one of our weekly meetings. After I’d finished, I went on to share what I envisaged life for our CEO would be like. Up front, let me state that I am NOT the CEO.
The first thing was that the CEO must never be busy. No, not busy at all, especially in the way most people define busyness. In fact, at least one-third of his working schedule should be absolutely blank. Another third of that working schedule should be filled with golf games, attending seminars, functions, trade shows, etc., and networking in general. At most, only one-third of a CEO’s working schedule should be taken up by what most people wou
ld call work. Just one-third, that’s all.
“In which lifetime??!!” you might very well ask in withering scorn at this point. Well, think about an airline Pilot. Add Co-pilot. Add Navigator. In this day and age, I’m told, these three persons aboard an airliner are, of all people, the ones with the greatest amount of nothing to do. The aircraft could actually take off, fly to its destination, and land without any intervention whatsoever by these three highly-trained, superbly capable humans. Just think – this was possible before the Northeast Line came into being! There is no driver in a train plying the Northeast Line, and now the Circle Line, too, but we board the train and take our journey nonchalantly, trusting in the infallibility of technology welded together with some mysteriously omniscient system to get us safely to our destination. Would you get aboard an airliner, strap on your seatbelt, and order coffee with the same degree of nonchalance if you knew that there were no pilots on board? Now, what if you were part of a team where you only saw your CEO five working days a month or less, including seeing your CEO via videoconferencing, etc? What if you don’t even know what your CEO looks like? Would you like working in such a team?
No doubt, you are already at least dimly aware that such a scenario is actually possible, even if it seems far-fetched at the moment. Deep within, you are cognizant of the fact that there are conditions which must be fulfilled before such a scenario even becomes possible. You also know of a certainty that if your CEO is able to conduct business affairs in this manner with equanimity, your team is well on its way to great and sustainable success and significance. And with success and significance come great wealth in all its forms. I don’t know about you, but I want to be wealthy, and not just financially, either. So what are the conditions undergirding this desirable scenario? 
The Organizational Organism 
Many years ago, I wrote to a certain CEO of a large corporation I was working in after attending a seminar where he was the keynote speaker. He had, in his keynote address, likened the workings of our corporation to that of a large supertanker. The helmsman might turn the wheel, say, fifteen degrees to port in a smart and efficient manner, but the supertanker would only respond to that stimulus after a significant time lapse due to its great bulk. In my short letter, I offered the view that such an image would generate similar behaviour in the form of delayed responses throughout our corporation, since that would be perceived as the expected corporate culture. I offered the illustration of a sperm whale diving in search of food. When the sperm whale decides to dive, it dives immediately. There is no humanly discernible time lapse between the signal from the sperm whale’s brain and the immediately massive response from the sperm whale’s body. If the sperm whale’s body were slow to respond to signals from the sperm whale’s brain, it would undoubtedly succumb to its tentacled nemesis before it even had a chance to engage in mortal combat in the cold, inky blackness. Likewise, if we think of our companies in terms of supertankers, we would soon wallow in monolithic complacency. Think in terms of a living organism, and we would transform into a growing and significant entity.
Be a Leader
That means being a leader where you are, with what you have, right now. Have a leader’s mindset no matter what your position may be. A great illustration of that can be found on the website of Simple Truths at http://www.richestmanmovie.com/index.html. Marty worked as a checkout clerk in one of the largest department store chains in the world, Wal-Mart. Normally, no one would have thought that he would be making a significant impact on the lives of others. Yet he did. Marty went out of his way to make his customers feel appreciated. Even if all he did was spend less than two minutes with them, he would offer a handshake, a smile, and look them in the eye when he said “Thank you for shopping here today”. People know instinctively when such a statement is made sincerely or just as a matter of form. Likewise, when we give of our best, no matter what our station in life, people will notice, and it would only be a matter of time before we are rewarded for it. Giving our best not only makes us leaders almost by default, but we would accrue the much greater benefit of achieving great satisfaction knowing that we gave of our best and made a difference in someone else’s life. Determine to yourself that you will BE a leader NOW, wherever you are.
CEOs are People, too!
Despite what many people say, CEOs are actually just people, too! You may not think so, but they DO want to make a difference for the better during the time they have as CEOs. In his book “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough”, Harold Kushner describes an interview he had with a man whose colleague had died over the weekend. The man was highly troubled by the fact that his colleague’s office had been cleared out and that the colleague had been replaced in very short order, just like that. The man described it as something like throwing a rock into a very still pool of water. When the rock falls into the pool of water, ripples are created. However, the ripples soon stop and the pool returns to placid stillness, as though the disturbance of the rock being thrown into it had never happened at all. The man was disturbed by the seeming senselessness of his colleague’s life; it was as though it did not matter whether his colleague had ever lived.
Harold Kushner is convinced that “…it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear that our lives will not have mattered, that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived. What we miss in our lives, no matter how much we have, is that sense of meaning.”
I am of the same mind. Think of your CEO in this way, that he wants badly to make a significant impact in the lives of others, including yourself, and you will be much better positioned to be a team player who leads. Remember the empty slots in your CEO’s schedule I spoke about earlier? Well, they aren’t exactly empty – they are for your CEO to move around touring your organization’s facilities, speak to staff at all levels, develop relationships, and to live out the practice of Management by Walkabout (MBW) that so many speak of. Think in terms of you being a cell in a dynamic organism, and you will soon realize how much you actually contribute, or SHOULD be contributing, and how valuable you are as you lead both yourself and others from where you are. I believe that your personal worth, and with it, your corporate worth, would increase exponentially as you do! I wish you great joy and satisfaction in your career!
