The CEO: Love Him, Hate Him, Does it Matter?

It's not uncommon (even in times like these) to think your boss kind and efficient. But what about the company CEO?  And what about when you never meet your CEO because the company is too big, and he/she is just too darn famous to drop by for morning bagels?  It's nice to eat bagels with the big guy/gal at the top and note he/she, too, is capable of spilling coffee and getting cream cheese on his/her collar. Better yet if he/she doesn't take your appetite away in the process by discussing consolidation, layoffs, and additional budget belt tightening.

The point is it's all too common to have an unfavorable impression of the CEO in a large organization. You never meet him/her face-to-face in a human-contact-amenable setting, so he/she is the ideal scapegoat. Easier to be mad at him/her than your boss, who's just following orders anyway. In a way maybe that's healthy. What if you had no one to blame for your problems at work but yourself and those immediately surrounding you?  How unpleasant and awkward would that be?  The CEOs of large companies get paid plenty of money (even after they're fired for questionable behavior), so the least they can do is take the heat for your daily distress. Maybe eventually there will be intra-office festivals in which the CEO, with a face and reputation and no known personality (to the majority of the company), will be burned in effigy. Would that be seriously bad, or just plain funny?  Call me a heathen, but I think that would be pretty funny, and somewhat cathartic for those lacking executive perks. Probably not the best idea, though, for cultivating a positive corporate culture.

That brings me to another point: Does it matter if you're a large company and the majority of your employees have an unfavorable impression of the man/woman supposedly guiding their work lives?  Your knee-jerk response may be to exclaim, "Of course, you have to believe in them. They're the face of the company." But I'm not so sure. So what if I love my CEO (in theory or in the abstract like I love historical figures)?  I think it all boils down to how much you like the person directly above you, and those directly side-by-side with you in the surrounding cubicles. Ideally you get both--love of CEO and love of cubicle mates--but if you don't happen to have the former, having the latter in spades certainly will get you through the work day.

In journalism, we have an expression: "All news is local," or something like that. Well, not that I don't care about the rest of the world, but when it comes to daily corporate survival, I'd say that old saying is on-target.

As an HR exec or trainer, what that means is honing communications to employees down to the departmental level. Too often those of us traveling in the lower levels (steerage anyone?) of the corporate ship receive memos about visions, global strategy, and the always-good "consolidation of synergies."  Entry and mid-level players need to understand how their work fits into the goals of the company, but many of these communications never make the connection. They go on and on about the vision, vision, vision, and say nothing about your job, job, job. Instead of starting at the top and whittling the communication of strategy down to the departmental level, try flipping it. If you can, particularize strategy and vision statements for each department, citing specific recent challenges or achievements, and from there, explain the connection to what the company as a whole is doing. It's harder than just sending out one big, overarching vision/strategy statement once a year or quarter, but it'll be worth it.

Your vision for market dominance and global leadership is fabulous. Now tell me about your vision for fixing the coffee machine on my floor?

How do your employees feel about the CEO of your organization?  And does it truly matter?  What do you do (if anything) to communicate in specific, meaningful ways with your workforce?

Comments

[Bennet Simonton]

We will love the CEO only if we love to come to work. We will love to come to work only if "communication" is a priority by the CEO. But the communication I am referring to is management listening to whatever employees want to say when they want to say it, not vice versa.

If the CEO has built a company that listens intently to employees and gives them what they say they need to do a better job, thus showing great respect for employees, employees will feel ownership and responsibility for the workplace. With ownership, employees will be fully committed to the success of the company and will use all of their inherent creativity, innovation and productivity to improve company operations and success.

Conversely, if the CEO wants to waste his time communicating goals, targets, visions and other top-down commands, employees will not love to come to work and will not feel responsibility for the success of the CEO's workplace. Their performance will be poor and the CEO will have plenty of reasons to criticize what employees do. But the CEO will have caused that poor performance to exist.

Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"

[Ben Kroff]

We are a smaller company (200 employees) and we have all of our new hires join our CEO for lunch and an afternoon of getting to know eachother. They get the opportunity to see that he cares about each person in the company. Our CEO/Owner also takes the team members of the quarter out to lunch where he makes it a point to get to know each person. This goes along way in creating a feeling of "we are open for input and care about your ideas."