Are you a blind CEO?
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You think your future is assured by your plan. You worked hard on the plan, you are executing in accordance with the plan. You obsess about the plan.
There's nothing wrong with planning. But there's something more important, something that is going to make you or break you, something that is taking place in spite of your plan and outside your plan.
Something that, if you don't pay much attention to it, will literally keep your business from growing, or kill it outright.
You'll still have all those wonderful plans, but they won't mean anything. You'll have to go back to working for someone else - maybe even that competitor whom you hate.
What is more important than your plan? The work your people do, and their daily interaction with your customers.
Customer interaction with your product
Your product has to do what your customers expect it to do - and what you promise it will do. That means that the people who make it have to do what you expect them to do. If you're not checking, they may be wrecking.
I don't mean hanging over them every minute. I mean random careful checks. I mean coming into their office or the factory and examining what they are doing. Questioning them. Making sure they understood what they were supposed to do and that they did what they were supposed to do.
Some part of your brain, and some part of every single day, should be devoted to these random checks, and some part of every week should be devoted to formal progress meetings.
If you're not doing that, something is getting wrecked, I guarantee it. Something somewhere isn't right, and it's going to cost you. It will come right out of your pocket, because customers will demand a refund, and they will also tell everyone else what went wrong. In today's market, that negative review will probably be published where a potential customer is investigating your product because he was thinking about buying it.
Yes, there are wonderful and conscientious workers, at all levels. But people say "Sure," when they don't really understand, and they get to work, but doing the wrong thing.
Workers get distracted, and pack the wrong part in the box, and, somewhere in the world, someone gets that box, installs your product, and then something goes terribly wrong. Workers can get sloppy or hurried, they simply don't care, or they are upset with you about something. Whatever the reason, things can get wrecked if you don't pay attention.
If they know you are paying attention, and that you will check unexpectedly, they will be more attentive and more careful. If you're not checking, they could be wrecking.
Buying process interactions
During the buying process, there are three distinct phases when the customer is interacting with your people and your website:
- Before they buy (on your website, talking to others, etc.)
- As they are buying (on your website, in your store, talking to your salespeople)
- After they buy (trying to get service, thinking of referring others - or not, and deciding whether they will ever do business with you again).
I can't even begin to count the number of times I have seen a business owner obsessing over spreadsheets, while his salespeople were clueless or his customer service people were alienating every customer. It is the norm - not the exception - for business owners to be woefully unaware of how their customer-facing resources are killing their business. They simply don't know. It is "beneath" them to walk through the customer service department or listen to calls or visit a location where their employees are providing services for a customer.
Once again, random intentional "checking up" is what separates the blind CEO from the informed CEO.
The blind CEO - big man about town
Company owners and CEOs travel in high circles. They talk to bankers, investors, consultants, and managers. Meanwhile, their company is an engine that has been started up and is running full force. Is anyone paying attention to the engine? What does it sound like? How's it running? Does it need a bit of lubrication, is it vibrating, running rough?
The blind CEO doesn't get his hands dirty looking under the hood. He gets into the driver's seat and puts on his Gucci sunglasses and takes the baby for a spin, along with his buddies or a blonde. He talks big, about all his plans and how great things are going and how they're killing the competition. Meanwhile, his engine is about to seize and die because no one paid any attention to the little things. One of those little things is going to stop that engine cold.
The CEO with real vision is the one who understands what everyone is doing at all times because he checks up on them all the time. He listens to his salespeople talking to customers - not just the salesperson's side of the conversation, but the customer's side as well. He sits down with the lowest person on the accounting totem pole and asks to see what he's working on. He goes into the storeroom and stands there looking around for a bit, observing. He asks to see the proposals that are going out to customers. He participates in conference calls with customers. He goes into the customer service department and actually takes calls from customers. (When have you ever seen that happen?) He asks vendors how it is going and asks them if there's anything they think he could be doing better (again, when have you ever seen that happen?).
It's important to be this careful, because it's so easy for customers to see things that the CEO will never see - because he's not looking and his own people hide bad things from him. Even co-workers will hesitate to rat on a co-worker, until things are really bad, because of peer loyalty. It's easy to stay in the dark for a long time.
Your customers see the bad things you don't see - things that are wrecking your future profits - if you're not checking.
"What's enchanting? A book that tells you exactly how to grow your revenue." - Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions
