Advice for Young CEOs: Healthy Corporate Culture Is Essential for Achieving Goals
I’ve always thought about writing a blog for “the younger me.” Saying some of the things I’ve learned in a lifetime in the software world that, upon retrospection, I wish I had known when I entered it. As a CEO, I have learned many life lessons that I sure would have benefited from, but probably not appreciated, years ago as my career began.
Big Hairy Audacious Goals
In the well-known business book Built to Last by Jim Collins, he uses the phrase BHAG (pronounced bee hag), an acronym for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Part of being a CEO is to paint the BHAGs in a way that employees aspire to them, live them, and see alignment with them as a litmus test for innovation.
I wish I had understood as a young CEO years ago just how important it was to incorporate culture in my BHAGs… I wish I knew then what a BHAG was and why they matter. I do now, so in that conversation with a younger me, I would emphasize that the most important BHAGs are the ones that govern how people act and interact. It is those actions that can arouse or stifle innovation. Great corporate culture attracts and retains talent.
I suppose, like many CEOs, the younger me would have aspirational BHAGs that dealt with world-changing ideas. New products to solve unsolvable problems. Reinventing processes to make the business enduring and profitable and challenging the status quo in meaningful ways.
Now decades later, I see those as goals, not BHAGs. I wonder if Les Moonvest had a BHAG for personal conduct rather than innovative programming if he would still be the head of CBS. I’m curious if Raj Nair had a BHAG that was to be the example of appropriate conduct and not just to build great cars if he would still be President of Ford and their stock price would not have dropped 37%.
Great leaders set great goals but must enable a great culture to achieve them. So I think the message I would have given to the younger me would be to center on ethics and a positive corporate culture, and the lesser goals will be easier to obtain and will be enduring.
Aside from a message to a younger me, I have a thought, really a challenge, to share with other CEOs. As you go into the 2019 strategic planning cycle and share your goals with your management team, where do ethics and culture rest on that list?
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MEET THE AUTHOR
J Rollins is the co-founder and CEO of ETHIX360. J is a well known leader and innovator who has served on senior leadership teams ranging in responsibility from Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, SVP of Product Strategy and Chief Operating Officer.
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At ETHIX360, our goal is simple: to provide an affordable, flexible, and comprehensive answer to employee communication, policy management, corporate training and case management on issues related to corporate ethics, code of conduct, fraud, bribery, and workplace violence.
