Thinkings Of What Is A Good Company Leader
Tags: Startup, Thinking, Management, Company, Leadership

Discussion about why some company leaders are not doing well, and how their behaviors influence the entire company.

NOTE:

1. This article may only apply to startups in China (since I work for companies in China)

2. This article is intended to disclose a phenomenon, no offense to anyone or any potential group

3. All kinds of opinions are welcomed

I have worked for several different companies in the past, and I have met different kinds of company leaders, or let’s say, CEOs, in my career life so far. The most impressive thing is that disappointing CEOs seem to have some bad traits in common, which has extremely negative effects on the sustainable development of a company in the long run. I would like to briefly talk about several points of view below, and see if we can get some insights from the facts.

SUGGESTION 1: LEAVE THE WORK TO EXPERTS IN EACH AREA

Some CEOs are always trying to behave like experts in every discipline. For example, a CEO may teach the design team how to do UI & UX design even though he or she has no relevant background. Or he or she may tell developers how to solve a technical problem, even if he or she knows nothing about embedded development. He or she may also “imagine” a deadline for a project, ignoring the role of a project manager and the feasibility of such a ridiculous deadline.

Consider what you can do on this occasion. Politely interrupt his or her confident speech and say, “ Sorry, you are totally wrong”? Well, it might work in other countries, but in China, especially in a startup, the CEO has overwhelming power. Silence and obedience are usual endings.

If this kind of circumstance occurs often, it will definitely undermine a company in the following aspects.

I. What would those division leaders feel when a CEO is doing their job regardless of their specialty? They would probably feel that neither their personality nor their professionality is respected. In most circumstances, division leaders are more experienced in his or her field than anyone else, including the CEO. Even if the CEO is equipped with relevant background, he or she has been away from detailed work for quite a long time.

II. Since the CEO is not, or no longer an expert in this area, most of his or her decisions in a specific area are incorrect. For instance, some CEOs exaggerate their companies’ capabilities and may promise partners or providers an impossible plan, without discussing with the division leaders in advance. This often results in unpredictable consequence and make things become tougher and messier, because no one, including the division leaders, knows how to realize those impossible plans.

III. CEO’s time is really precious, and shouldn’t be spent on dealing with detailed work. If a CEO often works in a way like a division leader or other employees, then gradually nobody would think further when they come across problems or challenges. They may consider that it does not deserve deep thinking, because the CEO will eventually make the determination. What’s worse, the CEO may think that employees are all idiots, because everything is waiting for his or her decision. He or she feels more tired, but the company does not seem to become a little bit better since less time is spent on setting up the company’s target, direction, strategy, and efficiency system.

Think further about it. There are only two circumstances in which a CEO is doing a division leader’s job:

a. The division leader is an idiot or does not fit the position

b. The CEO is not doing his “CEO work”.

Of course, ‘b’ is the CEO’s fault. However, when it comes to ‘a’, it is because the CEO hired a wrong person. Then it is still the CEO’s fault.

SUGGESTION 2: RESPECT AND BELIEVE YOUR EMPLOYEES, PARTNERS, AND 3RD PARTY PROVIDERS

In fact, this is closely related to the aforementioned point, because a CEO doing another person’s job is an obvious expression of distrust. Distrust not only makes employees feel sad and uncomfortable but also harms people’s passion and their willingness to show better performance. In the long run, the working environment will gradually become passive and mutually suspicious.

Additionally, CEOs who do not believe their partners or providers will always send their own employees to act as supervisors. It has no positive effect on pushing things forward, but only causing more unnecessary waste of time, money and labor resources.

Moreover, respect is more than respect people’s professionality. Some CEOs blame employees or even division leaders for every single mistake (sometimes perhaps not a mistake), without realizing that he or she is harming others’ dignity. The CEO tends to show in front of everyone that he or she is the most brilliant and the only correct person in the company, and no contradiction is allowed. Totally wrong.

As a CEO, it is better to trust the employees, the partners and providers you selected. Otherwise, do not hire or choose them at the beginning. It will result in nothing else but a waste of time and more resources. Besides, it makes no sense for a CEO to behave as the most brilliant person in the company. If you are the most brilliant person in every field, then it is absolutely a failure, because you do not have the even a single excellent person working for you. If you have an excellent team working for you, then it is better to play their best performance and share the CEO’s responsibility.

As a CEO, if you think some of the employees are not working in the right way, just tell them how to do things right, teach them the right method and guide them to the right direction. They will be really grateful to you and grow rapidly. Do not always blame them for making mistakes or doing the wrong thing. Doing things right is more important than doing the “right” things.

SUGGESTION 3: EFFICIENCY IS ESSENTIAL, NOT THE WORKING HOURS

Working longer and longer tends to be a more usual case in China than anywhere else around the world. Employees working overtime will be praised, while those working regularly will be suspected whether their workload is saturated.

“996” (work from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week) seems to become a consensus in China, especially in the Internet field. Startups blindly follow “BAT” (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, the three most famous companies in China), without any deserved welfare for overtime working. Many CEOs regard working overtime as a routine and naturally equals working hours to outputs. People begin to acknowledge by default that more working hours, more work will be done. They pay more attention to working hours instead of efficiency and necessity of working overtime. However, lots of work do not have to be done, lots of work can be done more efficiently, and lots of work are done in the wrong way, waste of time.

There are two main problems in this phenomenon.

I. When working 12 hours a day becomes usual, nobody would think that finishing work within 8 hours is normal, and it will only be regarded as not saturated workload. Consequently, nobody dares finish his or her work early. Therefore, 8-hour work turns into 12-hour work. Obviously, efficiency actually decreases.

II. People spend more time working or executing, but less time thinking about how to do things in a more efficient way, in the right way, and in a clever way. Since most the time is spent in the company, employees’ work-life balance is destroyed. They gradually become a working machine instead of energetic and creative people. There is no chance to obtain new things from everyday life. People tend to lose innovation, and so does the company.

Insights

There are so many aspects that could be listed as examples, and I want to just stop listing problems here because there is an obvious conclusion we can find out from the facts above. It seems that quite a number of CEOs from startups in China do not really know how to run a company, or let’s say, they do not realize that they are not good at running a company, and they do not have the knowledge to run a company well.

How does this happen? Because most of the CEOs are elites in their industry, and they are clever, ambitious and experienced. it is weird that they could not realize such an obvious fact and all the problems mentioned above.

There can be loads of reasons, but the one I want to mention here is that they are overconfident. They evaluate themselves much higher than their real abilities, though their abilities are already higher than common people. Quite a few CEOs of startups are from the middle-level management team in top companies, such as Microsoft, Lenovo, etc. Their everyday work is to understand the commands and strategies from above and convey the commands to execution level below. Many of them believe that they are the only ones who completely understand both high-level strategies and execution level work.

However, the fact is that these middle-level elites neither know how to make decisions (because they have never joined a single one), nor they know how a requirement is implemented and realized (because they have never tried to realize one themselves). This is the essence of the cognition bias, which leads to all the problems mentioned above. Among these CEOs, many have owned doctor degrees, which help them enter into a middle-level management team directly when they get out of college or institution. Thus these CEOs have never experience execution work and know nothing about it. What a pity!

Thus things become easier to understand. These CEOs do not have the experience of working as an execution-level employee, so they do not understand the feelings of employees at this level. They do not know how eager these employees want recognition, encouragement, motivation, and trust. The only thing employees know is that do as the CEO says.

Many startups in China fail due to management problems, and now we have approached to part of the reasons. Many CEOs do not have the sense and knowledge to operate a company well, but they believe they can. They use their experience in the past to lead a company and become stuck in the castle they build for themselves with no way out. They trust themselves, and they trust the past. Therefore, they begin to lose direction and gradually block themselves, but they can hardly be aware of it, even if someone else reminds them.

I will not talk too much about solutions to this phenomenon, because it is a process that companies should experience, and this is not the main purpose of this article. In fact, the CEO should be clear about what he needs to do. Set up the target, make the strategy clear, establish effective and proper standards and system (including awards, incentives, and punishment) that fit the company, and pay more attention to employee feelings. Only when these things have been done, it is possible for a company to grow well and make more innovations.