Surviving Mediocrity Inside The Bowels Of A Business: Think Like a CEO
by Jean-Louis Gassée
As I have in the past with notes such as The HR-Less Performance Review, Respect Your Sales People, They Earn Your Salary and Lame Neutering Performance Reviews, I’m going to veer from the technology and finance beat to consider what some Valley wags call a “Human Remains” (HR) question: What should you do if you find yourself caught in a pocket of mediocrity?
“I’m surrounded by lazy, marginally competent people. The boss is no better, and neither is the boss’ boss. What we’re doing is Not Even Wrong, it’s bureaucratically lame. I have much better ideas than my ‘superiors’, but no one understands, no one cares…”
I’m listening to an engineer vent his frustration over breakfast at Buck’s, the historic diner and unintentional museum in Woodside, just north of Sand Hill Road and “VC Gulch”. Perhaps I’ll provide a more a detailed description of Buck’s in a future Monday Note; an acquaintance calls the decor ‘fractal’…
As we attack our huevos rancheros, I ask the sacramental question: What’s your company’s business? What does it do, how does it make money?
I’ve had these conversations countless times over the thirty years that I’ve spent in the Valley, and every single time — no exaggeration — this simple question is met with befuddlement, sometimes followed by an I-just-work-there evasion. It shouldn’t be a difficult question, the answer is there for everyone to see. For example, Google makes money selling the ad technology that’s made possible by its first-rate AI developments…
It’s my turn to be confused. How can your solution make sense, how can it rise above the status quo if you can’t easily and quickly tell what your company does? The lack of intellectual/emotional alignment surely contributes to your dissatisfaction. And, please, let’s dispense with answer such as The Boss Said So or, even worse, Marketing Requested It. Merely following orders or listening to lowly marketeers is beneath the dignity of a red-blooded engineer.
A few prompts and the frustrated but intelligent engineer comes up with an approximation of his company’s raison d’être.
We then move to the next step: Put yourself in the CEO’s shoes and weigh your theoretically creative solution against the actual pressures and needs of the company. How will your proposal advance the company’s purpose? What difference will it make? Will it sell more hardware, attract more subscribers, advance the company’s software technology?
If it merely improves things, or provides a more elegant solution, don’t bother. A mere improvement isn’t enough to pierce through the wall of noise engulfing top execs, they have too many problems, too many shouts for their attention. You must only propose something that’s either impossible today, or unthinkable. (Unthinkable? Regard the mouse before it saw the market’s light in 1983.)
Now consider the CEO’s role as a leader. You can’t have an army that’s composed solely of elite troopers, one in which, as in Lake Wobegon tales, every soldier is above average. Some battles are best fought with unexceptional — but certainly not ‘expendable’ — troops who are proudly satisfied to get their job done without examining the motivation, without looking left or right. If you were the CEO, would you think that your idea is so brilliant that it’s worth changing the battle plan and possibly disaffecting the “foot soldiers” — and possibly your boss?
Taking the CEO’s perspective may pain you with its dose of humility, but it will give you a better sense of the true meaning of priority.
Back in the boiler room, you now see how your ideas align — or not — with the CEO’s goals. No one cares, nor should they care, about the crystalline purity of your code if it doesn’t clearly advance the cause, even if the benefit is indisputable.
Nice sermon, says our engineer, but I’m not giving up. How do I actually get to do things my way?
If you really believe in your idea and are convinced it’s the right thing to do for the company (and not just for your ego), go over your bosses’ heads and write to the C-level exec, the Corporate VP of Software or something similar. Describe what you propose to do, explain how it will change the game, tell him or her how much time it will take and what resources you’ll need (as few as possible, at least in the beginning). And don’t forget to say good things about your colleagues and especially your boss, no matter how much it pains you. This won’t fool the top dog but it will make you sound like a Team Player (see hypocrisy here), a must if you want to be heard.
Assuming you have something of substance, rinse and repeat once a month. You’ll get noticed, if only for your polite insistence and for the fact that actual execs — the ones who haven’t exceeded their Sell-By date — are beset by the Fear of Missing Out, the concern that they’ll miss something that would make an actual difference — to the company, or to their political power position.
That’s it. Simple and difficult.
This advice comes to you from a repentant sinner. When I started at HP France 50 years ago next month (Monday Notes coming), I immediately began badgering my bosses with scattershot critiques of everything, from lousy ads to buggy software. Did I have game changing solutions? Of course not — I sometimes had nothing to suggest.
Luckily, this was the motherly HP described in David Packard’s book, not today’s sad remnants. My bosses took pity on the agitated 24-year old (immodestly, I have no doubt that my sales numbers helped).
By the time I started Apple France, I had settled down a bit. No more random complaints, I took to writing temperate position papers on various aspects of the Mac, papers that I sent up the chain of command. They must have gotten through; I was parachuted from France to Cupertino to run the engineering side of the house. Unfortunately, once I got to California I reverted to form and began to make unconstructive “observations”. My benefactor put up with it for five years, and then rightly showed me the door. A relief for both of us.
— JLG@mondaynote.com