Be competent at what your company actually does (as opposed to viewing everything through spreadsheets). View people as assets not as cost factors. See it as your job to empower your employees to do what they’re good at. Have a long term perspective of how you want to develop the company and what you see as success factors (as opposed to just staring at quarterly numbers). tl;dr: don’t be an MBA.
This.
Or a dead one
Long term strategic thinking, experience to understand when trends and short-term solutions would be long-term mistakes, and the ability to avoid directly questioning someone with a skillset they don’t have themselves about technical or complex issues.
Go through an intermediary. Like a department head.
The developers, engineers, and architects don’t need your help, they need you to set logical long-term goals, hire good department heads, and schmooze with other CEOs in the same space.
Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff? It doesn’t have to be a meeting with presentations, expectations and all that. Don’t you think that management could use your help and advice to make good strategic decisions in the long term?
Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff?
I mean questioning as in second-guessing the people who actually know stuff. Not asking experts for their honest thoughts.
Don’t you think that management could use your help and advice to make good strategic decisions in the long term?
Management is one thing - C-levels is yet another kettle of fish.
In my experience C-levels rarely want the technical answer to a question, and will be personally insulted / defensive if the answer is something they don’t understand. And they will ask their questions in such a way as to insult the expert. Two negative results that don’t help the business in any way.
But Dept heads and the PM office will often be able to explain why certain choices were made, and how that aligns with the business needs, without the complexities that cause misunderstanding between two people of such wildly divergent skillsets.
Now if the CEO can also write the code, or run the wetlab instruments, and really does want the nitty-gritty, complex technical answer, that is a different story. And rarely the case in my career.
A C-suite executive isn’t making decisions from a technical point of view. They have to balance their decisions across the counsel of several experts in their fields to choose the best option, with those recommendations constantly in conflict.
A C-suite executive is likely going to focus more on the impacts of the decision made, which can be a far different conversation than a technical expert is used to having.
I think we agree. CEO should not be making decisions from a technical point of view, so they should not be second-guessing the technical people.
I’m at the stage of my career that pretty much every job I take, I report directly to the CEO. And the difference between what they should do and what they actually do is why I made my statement at the top of this thread.
Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff?
You do to some extent, mainly to verify that the technical aspects underpinning the decision is sound. However:
- By going past the department head, you are cutting out the person who is likely going to be responsible in implementing the decision. It can be frustrating implementing a decision that you had little input on.
- The technical expert may not fully understand the non-technical ramifications of a decision. What sounds like a small change could end up costing millions or have regulatory implications.
That’s right, it’s certainly not a good idea to leave the head of department out of the loop - this position should definitely be informed about every relevant process. I just think that it’s in everyone’s interest if senior management can be seen by the “common people” from time to time. It shows appreciation for the work and opinions of all employees and is also a good opportunity to make sure that no important aspects or overly technical details may have been lost on the way from the head of department to the executive floor. Just as you say.
look up a guy named Dan Price. Dude saw his Ice Cream company failing and chose to slash his pay exponentially to offer living wages and benefits to everyone else, and business fucking boomed for it. There are literal chapters in economics textbooks about what he did.
Unfortunately, that dude was relatively recently charged with SA allegations / rape.
His wife also accused him of beating her.
I believe charges were dropped but it definitely cast a shadow over his public good guy persona.
It speaks a lot about the justice system fairness that even if charges dropped no one believes it.
Typically I agree but I believe this was repeat allegations from multiple parties. If it was only one person and it was dropped, maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt. But fool me twice, shame on me.
That part is less about the justice system and more a likely triangulation of him probably being not so great, at best. Plenty of people got charges dropped or “redeemed” on a technicality who are definitely guilty.
Here’s a NYT article about the allegations, pretty disturbing stuff. If you’re not aware, coming forward with charges like this is incredibly difficult, and traumatizing. So the fact that so many women came forward against him, is not something so easily dismissed. Much like with drumpf, when there’s this much smoke, you don’t have to speculate about the presence of fire anymore.
Honestly, compentcy around the product line and customer base, humility to reach out to the experts in the company for decisions, industry connections, actually being available and listening to employee feedback and confidence in decisive action born out of the latter items.
The best CEOs I’ve seen (across all sizes of corporations) have a passion for the product/services they sell and the customers they sell to.
