When
I was traveling a few years ago to Washington D.C., I stopped into one
of those magazine
stores at the airport to find something I could read during my
flight. The headline from the June 21, 1999 issue
of Fortune
Magazine
jumped off the rack. Since then this article has been one of
my
favorites to share with friends,
associates, and
clients. I've also found the entire article on-line,
and highly recommend that you read it at Why
CEO's Fail
“It’s
rarely for lack of smarts or vision. Most unsuccessful
CEO’s stumble because of one simple, fatal
shortcoming.” This was the headline from the
article in Fortune
Magazine
that jumped out at me from the magazine rack at the airport.
What
I read during my flight was a very insightful article written
by Ram Charan and Geoffrey Colvin.
Charan
and Colvin studied over 40 failed CEO’s from Fortune 500
companies to see what went wrong. The fatal flaw of these
failed
CEO’s was pretty simple. It was
execution.
But the reason they failed in
their execution came down to something familiar to many of us in
leadership and management.
People
problems.
That’s right, these
captains of industry were toppled
because of people problems, as in not having the right person in the
right job, holding on to them too long, and not holding them
accountable for the important
things. As the article states, the majority also shared
another flaw connected to their
people problems: Ignoring the voice inside that said
“you
have a problem, move on it now”. Instead they
replaced that
voice with “I can coach them”,
“He’s/She’s my guy/gal”,
“They’re
so talented they just need more time”, or “I
don’t
want to start over with someone new (head in the
sand)”.
As
the article explains, these unsuccessful
CEO’s/Managers lacked emotional strength
when it came
down to
personnel decisions. In short, the fatal flaw of "failure to
execute" was due to bad personnel decisions, which came
from not
having the emotional strength to do what was needed to be
done in the area
of people problems.
How
do you avoid this yourself? In my opinion, you do it by
performing
personnel evaluations on a consistent business level no matter
what.
You also do this by keeping the hiring process as
a “just
business” proposition and continue to keep it that
way
through proper and fair appraisals of performance. If
it’s
time for a change, act upon it before it’s too late while
keeping
it all business.
It's very much like the
way
stockbrokers approach a stock: we'll sell once we go below
this
mark for whatever reason. It’s a discipline, or
better
still, it’s a behavior that does not falter.
Leaders
need certain qualities to succeed, and there is a distinct difference
between management behaviors and
manager qualities. For example,
management behaviors
include execution, decisiveness, follow-through, and delivering on
commitments. In comparison manager qualities
include
integrity, maturity, energy, business/people/organizational acumen,
intellectual capacity, superior judgment, drive, the motivation to
grow, and the ability to convert learning into
practice.
The
power of a managers qualities will predict how well they can
execute the behaviors with the required emotional strength.
Is
strategy, market strength, and timing important?
Sure. But
to a business nothing is more important than having the right person in
the right job, period. That is why CEO’s and
managers need
to regularly inspect how they recruit, who they hire, how they evaluate
performance, and have emotional strength to follow-through
with
what is required when people problems arise.
One
final
point to consider. Hiring is the single best/worst thing you
can
do for your company. Hire people as if your job depends on
it,
because in reality it does.
Charan
and Colvin summarized their article this way, “They were all
smart people who worried deeply about a lot of things. They
just
weren’t worrying enough about the right things:
execution,
decisiveness, follow-through, delivering on commitments.
Are you?”
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About
the Author, Bill
Grady
Bill
Grady has over
35 years
of marketing and advertising creation, sales,
and management experience.
He
began selling advertising at age 20, became a radio
station General
Manager at the age of 23, and has personally sold millions of
dollars
in
local advertising over his career.
Bill is a former
President of the Iowa Broadcasters Association and his
stations were
recipients of
multiple
National Association of Broadcasters
awards for excellence.
Since
2002, Bill has brought his marketing and advertising knowledge
to
thousands of small business owners in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota,
Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
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