The CEO is Dead

y Larrywomack.com

Saturn was one of three Titans who ruled the universe.  He was also the father of Zeus who defeated the Titans and became ruler in their stead.  After the defeat, Saturn moved to Italy and established a golden age of equality and plentiful harvests.  To celebrate their good fortune each year, beginning on December 17^th, the ancient Italians held a seven-day festival called Saturnalia.  Unrestrained revelry and the crowning of the Bean King marked the festival.  The women gathered on the first day of the celebration to bake a large cake with one special ingredient:  an uncooked garbanzo bean.

Just before sundown, the people would pause in their frolicking to gather in the piazza.  The women would break off pieces of the cake and serve them to the men.  The man who got the piece with the bean became the king of the celebration, and, for the next six days, he ruled the province.  He could have any woman for his pleasure.  He could eat or drink to his desire, make decrees of his liking, and was robed in the finest attire and bedecked in the most precious jewels of the realm.  On the eve of the last day of the festival, he was killed.

The Bean King and the CEO are dead.  Like the blacksmith and the buggy whip maker, they are no longer necessary.  In this blistering, 24-hour business day, top-down decisions are too cumbersome and golden parachutes too obscene.  A global collection of quick-thinking experts will guide companies through the Internet age and beyond.  We must celebrate the death of the old way and rise out of the ashes of experience, looking forward to the renewed possibilities for success, accomplishment, and reward to be found in change and renewal.  After all, the future is all we have.

In the old days, running a business was primarily a matter of finance and control.  Most corporate executive officers began with financial backgrounds.  There was a corporate pecking order, and everyone respected it.  The CEO, however, made all final decisions.  Most of those decisions were related to the creation of quarterly financial gratification.  Tactics, not strategies, were the order of the day. The CEO’s primary job was to seek ways to maximize the company’s resources, sometimes even at the expense of the customer.  Recognition for the tactical successes of the CEO was in the form of company perks, more staff, larger offices, and bigger paychecks.

During the sixties and seventies, the control-type CEO could be successful.  It was a time when the marketplace was mainly under the control of the sellers.

In the late seventies when the marketplace shifted to the control of the buyer, it became increasingly difficult for a CEO to be successful by just maintaining a tight ship and holding course.

There are still many CEOs managing companies today who expect the control-style of leadership to produce the results of yesteryear.  In my workshops, when I discuss the shift from the sellers’ to the buyers’ market, I see most CEO’s in the room nod his or her head in agreement with my statements.  Yet when the question-and-answer period begins, it is obvious that their agreement is “lip-service” only and not action.  Most want to know about current organizational problems and opportunities.  Very few ask about the customer, the future, or marketplace dynamics.  A question I like to ask these CEOs is, “Who owns the business?”

Many leaders are confused by the correct answer to the question:  “The customer.”  The CEO and his stockholders may own the company.  The company owns the organization.  But the customer owns the business.

The CEO and his team decide what the organization will produce.  The customer, however, decides what is sold.  And many CEOs don’t have a clue as to what their customers want.  Many don’t even know they don’t know what the customer wants.

These unknowing leaders long for the days when they were flying high and time stood still.  They miss the time when business came to them instead of moving away, as it does today.

At a speech to an advertising club in South Carolina, I was asked, “How can we get our clients to better value art?”

“It ain’t art till somebody buys it.  It’s just a picture,”  I answered.  “Your products and services are valueless until someone gives you a check.”

In the sellers’ market, it was possible to adjust the organization to increase profits without serious regard for the impact on the customer.  The only approach that works today, however, is to constantly change the organization based on what the customer wants now and will want later.  That requires focusing on the business, not on the organization.

That means the CEO must know more about the customer than does anyone else in the organization.   The CEO’s primary role is to predict the future from the perspective of the customer and by crystal-balling the world economies, politics, and cultural changes.

CEOs no longer have the time or knowledge required to tamper with the work; they should be busy looking for the next opportunity for change.  They can no longer hide from the real demands of leadership in their ivory towers and hierarchical territories.  No more success by sitting in the top floor office and making financial predictions about the future.  CEOs must get out and get to know the customer.

Even the title Chief Executive Officer seems inappropriate in today’s business world.  It sounds pompous and removed from the action.  If you’re a CEO and you want to move with the tempo of the times, get rid of the title, get out of your chair, and spend more time with your customers.