Location Joke

I've been giving a lot of thought to the culture of CEOs. I've been watching Ken Lay with bemused interest as he says things like "I accept responsibility for Enron's collapse. But failure does not equate to a crime." He's right, but if he didn't know something was wrong, it was a moral crime to let him remain as CEO. As Enron set course for an iceberg, executives should have sounded the alarm. Instead, the attitude of the executives at Enron was sophomoric at best.

I first realized that corporate management was incompetent many years ago when I did some work through Earnst and Young for a major client of theirs. Between the client's inexperienced management and Earnst and Young milking the client for everything they had, I felt like I was back in high school with the cliques and power struggles. A few years later, I contracted with Montgomery Ward to work on some internal IT projects. Again, the power struggles and internal competition were fierce. I believe Wards would be around today if they didn't have five simultaneous competing IT projects managed by five different departments. Where was the leadership?

Leadership, real leadership, is one of those things that is as rare as originality in business. Real leadership directs a company by example, integrity, and vision. Real leaders are often at odds with the shareholders, who demand quick profits for a minimal stake in a company. Real leaders take chances, hurt when the company hurts, and live to make the company valuable to its industry. Seeing how that is rare I have come up with a theory for most CEOs.

I think most CEOs are nothing more than a location joke. You know, you had to be there to appreciate it and if you weren't then you will never get it. The joke is on the employees and customers because the location joke CEO gets paid the equivalent of a small town each year and will never feel what it's like to be penalized for a negative performance. In fact, many CEOs are rewarded for a failure by signing on to another CEO position while the fan is still getting smacked by crap at the previous company. This happens because many board of director members serve at each others' companies to help each other out.

There are really two kinds of CEOs. The first is the location joke CEO. This CEO doesn't care if the company is around in ten years. He just wants the benefits, golden parachute, and gargantuan paycheck. He is the CEO of convenience and will cut jobs, reduce product quality, and will hurt customer relations just to placate the share holders.

The other type is the CEO of passion. This type of CEO is a leader and will do whatever is necessary to keep the company viable for years to come. The CEO of passion fantasizes about the future of the company and is unwavering in his belief that the company is good and should be around for years.

Which type of CEO would you want to work for?

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