This business grew to $100 million revenues in 12 years without a business plan, without a budget, and without many meetings. Hard to believe, but true. Yet now they are changing their approach because they can feel themselves losing control.
I advise all my clients to follow this key success discipline that great managers routinely practice: They schedule a regular weekly 1 on 1 meeting with each of their direct reports.
I’ll bet everyone who has dreams of being a CEO has empathy when a founder or CEO gets fired. That’s certainly how I felt when I heard the news of George Zimmer’s dismissal from The Men’s Warehouse.
Some companies let time slip away from them. The result is one missed deadline after another. CEOs must come down hard and enforce deadlines.
I walk by Zynga’s cool building in San Francisco often on my way to a client I have in SOMA. So it was sad to hear of the layoff of over 500 employees. Such a fast acceleration to a billion plus in revenues, and now the growth curve has reversed. What are the lessons to be learned for other mid-sized company CEOs?
Most mid-sized business cannot be an amazing growth story. While the media loves crazy-fast growing companies, trying to make a company grow faster than it should often destroys value.
Too many CEOs try so hard to avoid the old-style command and control, “Donald Trump” style of management that they just aren’t tough enough on poor performance. Last week IBM’s CEO publicly criticized her sales function, and I think she was right to do it.
Any company that has weathered the recession of 2008-2009 well should congratulate itself for exemplary performance amidst truly trying times. And with the stock market at new heights and the broader economy on the upswing, the leaders of many high-flying companies could not be blamed for feeling that now is the time to double down on their strategy. Yet ironically this could sow the seeds of trouble.
Staying focused on the business plan is often as hard as crafting a great plan in the first place.
For company founders and sitting CEOs, the decision to pass the CEO seat to another is a big, risky decision. This article talks about how critical boards are– especially for closely held companies.
Robert Sher is founding principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that improves the leadership infrastructure of midsized companies seeking to accelerate their performance. He was chief executive of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 to 2006 and steered the firm to become a leading player in its industry (decorative art publishing).