My CEO Life

The following artice was recently published by Alaine Fontaine on his blog. I found it an interesting article and thought i would share it with you.

A couple of days ago, after a tough day, I had a small discussion with one of my developers at work. I asked him to show me some document on his PC, and it took an awful long time for him to open it up because he mapped a network share on his private laptop he brought to work, and his laptop somehow stopped responding. My reaction was to say that this was an unacceptable loss of time and that I would think about no longer allowing people to bring their own gear to work.

Whilst I was driving home, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this was an emotional decision and that it felt wrong. Now that I took some time to think it over, I am sure that this is not what I will do in the future, but rather the opposite! I will encourage people to bring their own stuff to work, and even more than that…

In short, this concept is called BYOC – Bring Your Own Computer, and this is not something I invented. It is currently actively applied by several big companies, like Citrix, and Microsoft, in a way that I consider as very smart.

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In the first part of this series i looked at some of the more hard core challenges i am facing in building a new business. In this entry i want to explore some other softer lessons being learned as we launch our new business. These lessons cover selection of people, the culture we want to create, our approach to working and most importantly having fun.

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In tough economic conditions, every business goes through a review of operations and for many of them, they will have to let some people go.  I have recently gone through this with my new business and there are some salient lessons that can be learned in downsizing.

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Yesterday i wrote some thoughts about the use of instant messenger in the work place and this stirred up strong debate, much of which is really around the trust we should place in our employees. Therefore following on from this i thought it would be good to explore just how much power we can gained from placing trust in people.

I have found that the more i trust people to get on with their jobs the better the work environment becomes and more importantly the more that gets done. Lets explore two extremes – first is a place with strong trust and the second is one without it.

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The short answer is nothing!  However i am hearing more and more about companies either banning or strong suggesting that employees dont use messenger and other similar applications.  This got me to thinking – why?

For me, banning messenger is like banning the phone or email.  I guess in days gone by bosses were banning email and the internet however imagine work life today without either of these. 

The real issue is trust and understanding. 

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I was chatting with a few folk the other day about different styles that CEO’s have.  Some wander around and chat, some roll up their sleeves and get deep into the hot issues, some just look at the numbers from their desk, while others cant help but micro manage. 

This got me to thinking, can a CEO really manage a business from his / her desk or do they really need to get out amongst the people?

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I received the following email from a reader in Italy and i thought i would reprint it as i think it is a well thought out piece on the importance of culture and how many companies are approaching the management of people. I would love the thoughts on this article. Here it is …

While reading about your experience, I’ve been strucked by how you point out not to the fact in itself (indeed the risk is part of the game) but on the way things have been managed, fully conflicting with the culture you had been building within the company over the years.  Not a question of “what”, but of “how”.

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How often is it that you get invited to a meeting that goes on and on and on.  You get there and there is no formal agenda, the other attendees are late, some don’t know why they have been invited, there is no real leader of the meeting and an hour or so later you leave with no real outcomes and you are left wondering what that was all about.

Well i think there should be a different approach – the 30 minute meeting.  In fact, if it can be shorter, thats even better. 

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The other day i wrote a post about politicians emerging where there is a leadership gap.  (Click here to read it).  In it i looked at some different types of people within a business and what happens when things change.  The article identified 4 types of peope – worker bees, survivors, aspirants and politicians.  Well the article stirred some discussion and Alain in Luxembourg wrote a great email all about the Worker Bee Politician Mutation.  Here it is …

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Working for a business takes up a significant part of every day and when you are travelling it can take up even more time however how often is it that you end up working with people that you just don’t get on with.  Well i think a question that is important to ask yourself in any interview is “does this person pass the beer test?”

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