CEO

"On one occasion, exasperated by one circumlocutory explanation, Don extracted a business card from his folder, slid it across the table, informed the CEO that all of us would leave the room for a few minutes and when we returned he hoped that the company’s business plan would be written on the back of the card."

"Say the head of product has waffled over a design decision, putting a product release date in jeopardy. Before the next executive team meeting, an effective CEO/coach might say, “Can you think about how to be more decisive in this setting? What if you laid out the two best options but made your own preference clear? Do you think you could do that?” If the product head agrees, there is a plan. Unlike negative criticism, coaching trains its sights on future improvement."

"Align and Connect for Teamwork Incentivize employees by showing how their objectives relate to the leader’s vision and the company’s top priorities. The express route to operating excellence is lined with transparent, public goals, on up to the CEO. Use all-hands meetings to explain why an OKR is important to the organization. Then keep repeating the message until you’re tired of hearing it yourself. When deploying cascaded OKRs, with objectives driven from the top, welcome give-and-take on key results from frontline contributors. Innovation dwells less at a company’s center than at its edges. Encourage a healthy proportion of bottom-up OKRs—roughly half. Smash departmental silos by connecting teams with horizontally shared OKRs. Cross-functional operations enable quick and…"

"This system also has a major drawback: it leaves the door open to all kinds of suspicions. The temptation is great to bring in, as minority shareholders at all levels, companies led by friends or cronies who will be offered compensation elsewhere. The temptation is even greater to enrich oneself through the magic of internal transfers. It is enough to have companies at the top of the cascade buy assets from other companies lower down, which have been undervalued. Or to sell, this time from the top down, overvalued assets. Thus, the top of the cascade, that is, the CEO, becomes richer, while the bottom, that is, the large industrial company with its millions of small shareholders, becomes relatively poorer."

"Stars want to go where the organization is moving. A strong direction from the top draws in good people and frees them up to take risks; the best talent is attracted to new projects when folks know strategic priorities are clear. Lots of good ideas come through divisions, but it takes a major, public commitment from the CEO to get the organization moving in a coherent direction."

"This way, the company generates an actual framework with which to make everybody “row in the same direction.” From the big dream, the company breaks down company-wide yearly goals, and then CEO goals, VP goals, Director goals, all the way down to the factory employees, who are all aligned by targets derived from the company’s Big Dream."

"The individual performance number, or index, is the weighted average of the score of all of the person’s goals: Goal 1: Raising sales by 10% (Weight of 70%) Goal 2: Increasing # of client visits by 5% (Weight of 30%) Let’s say this hypothetical employee has hit his first goal (grew sales by exactly 10%), but only 50% of the 2nd goal. Her final performance index will be: I.P. = (100%*70%) + (50%*30%) = 70% + 15% = 85%[15] This process is undertaken by the whole firm, from the CEO down to the lower managerial levels:"

"Most sales are not particularly complex: average deal sizes might range between $10,000 and $100,000, and usually the CEO won’t have to do all the selling himself. The challenge here isn’t about how to make any particular sale, but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience."

"En route to New York, Marty Lipton called. He had just gotten off the phone with Larry, who said the board felt strongly that the chief financial officer and the general counsel should report to them instead of the CEO. “That’s outrageous, I’m not doing that,” I said. “You really have to,” he replied. Again, his mantra was: *Just get in, get control of the company, and worry about everything else later.*"

"‘That’s not a bad idea’ Any use of double negatives such as this is an open invitation to mass confusion within the audience. Add the word ‘maybe’ and it gets even more problematic. The take-away from anyone hearing the CEO saying such a thing can vary from, ‘He loves it – let’s push ahead with the project’ to a diametrically opposed ‘He hates it – he specifically avoided saying it was a good idea.’ So, be definitive. If you approve or disapprove of something be assertive and make your position absolutely clear, making sure you explain why."