The effects of CEO MAP
by Miki SaxonYesterday I said that the thing that truly defines a company’s culture is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ of the CEO.
That’s true even when cultural change comes from the bottom up as it does at Best Buy where “So secret was the operation that Chief Executive Brad Anderson only learned the details two years after it began transforming his company. Such bottom-up, stealth innovation is exactly the kind of thing Anderson encourages. The Best Buy chief aims to keep innovating even when something is ostensibly working. “ROWE was an idea born and nurtured by a handful of passionate employees,” he says. “It wasn’t created as the result of some edict,” but it’s Anderson’s MAP that enabled that culture to emerge and flourish.
Good CEO MAP isn’t about “me” even in an industry where ego is king. According to Disney CEO Bob Iger, “The story shouldn’t be about me. It’s about the team.” And while Iger isn’t without the vision thing, no one would call him a big strategic thinker. But by surrounding himself with smart people, including Jobs and the Pixar crew, and letting them get on with it, Iger has recreated a can-do culture at Disney…”Bob lets [the person] who can handle the job get it done,” says [Steve] Jobs, who sits on the board and is Disney’s single largest shareholder. “It’s not [about grabbing] headlines. That’s rare in that town.”
CEO MAP that believes in “Sharing the wealth, listening to even the lowest-ranking workers, and rewarding risk…management structure is flat, flexible, entrepreneurial — and fast,” isn’t just a function of startups and it can be found even where it runs counter to the national culture. BMW’s “Norbert Reithofer, who took over in September. (His predecessor, Helmut Panke, stepped down upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60.) Says Reithofer: “We push change through the organization to ensure its strength. There are always better solutions.”
Much of BMW’s success stems from an entrepreneurial culture that’s rare in corporate Germany, where management is usually top-down and the gulf between workers and managers is vast. BMW’s 106,000 employees have become a nimble network of true believers with few hierarchical barriers to hinder innovation…Individuals from all strata of the corporation work elbow to elbow, creating informal networks where they can hatch even the most unorthodox ideas for making better Bimmers or boosting profits.
Robert L. Nardelli has a very different kind of MAP as displayed during his tumultuous time at Home Depot where he, “alienated customers just as thoroughly as he did employees…replaced many thousands of full-time store workers with legions of part-timers…98% of Home Depot’s top 170 executives are new to their positions; 56% of the changes involved bringing new managers in from outside the company.”
MAP comes in many flavors and with literally millions of variations within each one.
MAP builds layer upon layer throughout life.
MAP is not carved in stone and can be changed—it may not be easy, but it is possible.
Best of all, it’s your choice, in your control.
