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Be the CEO of Your Job
Sometimes a person says one sentence that just sticks with you and is so perfect that it defines a whole category of behavior. Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, riffed on the phrase “be the CEO of your job” in a board meeting a year or so ago. It stuck with me and I’ve thought about it many times since.
On Sunday, the NY Times did a great “Corner Office” interview with Mark titled Are You a C.E.O. of Something? Among other things it explored the idea of being the CEO of your job. Fred Wilson – also an investor in Zynga – wrote a post on Sunday titled Empowering Your Team which talks about one aspect of this. But Fred left out a great example from one of Mark’s earlier companies (Support.com) which really nails this concept.
“We had this really motivated, smart receptionist. She was young. We kept outgrowing our phone systems, and she kept coming back and saying, “Mark, we’ve got to buy a whole new phone system.” And I said: “I don’t want to hear about it. Just buy it. Go figure it out.” She spent a week or two meeting every vendor and figuring it out. She was so motivated by that. I think that was a big lesson for me because what I realized was that if you give people really big jobs to the point that they’re scared, they have way more fun and they improve their game much faster. She ended up running our whole office.”
Think about the conceptual progression. First, the CEO (Mark) had to have to courage to make the young, motivated, smart receptionist “be the CEO of her job.” Then, when the problem was put to him (“Mark, we’ve got to buy a whole new phone system”), Mark resisted doing something so many entrepreneurs (and executives, and managers) do – namely to “manage” the problem. Instead of spending a lot of his time solving the problem, or setting up a committee to spend a month figuring out the phone system, or asking someone more senior to the receptionist to figure it out, he gave her the responsibility of solving the entire problem. He anointed her “CEO of her job” – as the receptionist, she was the one that felt the most pain from the inadequate phone system and was probably in the best position to figure out a solution.
In this case, the notion of “be the CEO of your job” was in the culture of the organization so the receptionist – who was in Mark’s words young, motivated, and smart – took this seriously, spent real time figuring out the solution, and then solved it. I’m sure the early culture of Support.com was “don’t spend a lot of money” so the financial constraint, while vague, was probably understood. While there’s plenty more behind the scenes in the story, the young reception clearly “leveled up” (it’s impossible not to use game-speak when talking about Zynga) and ended up running the whole office.
I work with CEO’s every day. So I’m naturally wired to encourage them to be CEO of their own job. While this is pretty meta, it’s an important starting point as I already think this way all the time. I’m certainly not perfect and have moments where I just jump in and try to solve a specific problem, but most of the time I let the CEO’s be CEO. However, when I contemplate this, I realize I haven’t done a good job of encouraging the CEO’s to make everyone in their organization CEO of the job. Some CEO’s do this naturally and – not surprisingly – these are generally the highest achieving companies.
Pause and ponder the idea. Assuming you are in an entrepreneurial organization, are you being the CEO of your job? Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable? Do you get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like your CEO does? If not, would you be more effective if you did?
Now, if you are the CEO of an entrepreneurial organization, do you encourage everyone in the company to be CEO of their job? Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable? Do they get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like you do? If not, would they be more effective if they did?
If you applied the lens of “be the CEO of your job” to you job, would you behave any differently?
Brad,
Insightful post! What happens when you put people in situations beyond their capability or comfort? How do we know when people are ready to be the CEO of their job versus when you're setting them up for failure?
Thoughtful post. I have seen the good and bad of this management approach. You are spot on to connect the dots between the CEO, the company culture, and the rank/file's ability to "be the CEO" of their job.
In addition to empowering people, it is all about allocating your time carefully. If Mark Pincus is making the "what phone system should we use" decision, then something is going horribly wrong…
Exactly. Whilst I find the notion of giving people a challenge fundamentally valid, the realist in me would argue many receptionists would just say "It's not in my job description, I'm paid to answer phones, not buy them".
True, such a person has no place in a startup – but sometimes you're just too busy to fill every single role with people having the entrepreneurial gene.
That's the part where you have to be the CEO and know your team really, really well. There is an inherent risk involved in delegating authority, but it has to be done.
If you don't let go of the reigns a little bit, the micro-managing will kill you. Sure, you'll have a few failures here and there, but over time you'll learn that it's about training your team to make bold moves and improve with each new experience.
Best way to do it – start small. Give incrementally bigger tasks. I'm sure the receptionist didn't go from ordering phones to running the whole office, there were probably a number of other increasingly larger projects inbetween.
I think this is part of the reason Mark and Zynga have been so successful. As you suggest, it's one thing to talk about empowering employees and expecting them to be independent action-takers, and it's quite another to hand over the keys and tell them to do it. Creating and maintaining a culture of trust that allows people to exceed your expectations is both incredibly difficult and critically important.
I almost disagree with the "starting small." If you've done your job as the CEO and hired really amazing people, if you challenge them and, as Brad says, put them outside their comfort level, they will absolutely step up.
Trial and Error. The best advice I pulled from this story was give people a chance to rise to a challenge (no matter how big or small) and surround yourself with those who succeed.
Brad,
Great post. Love the concept.
Empowerment is the most telling form of leadership. When a person gets real responsibility does he/she raise their game up a level or shy away? In a growing company you need people who can pivot not only horizontally, but also vertically.
That's one reason Zynga is killing it, standing out in an ever-more-crowded pack of social games companies. Great people given a chance to act on their convictions and move quickly.
Thanks Brad
This is the way I have always managed people. Its a bit sink or swim, but it has never failed me and has produced vital, empowered, knowledgeable, and excited team members that want to work for me again. At first they are a bit nervous about it, but everyone loves being in charge. Not sure how I came to manage this way, but it took me time to realize that not everyone does this. It also means less hassles for me and less work.
Not a new notion just relabled… Libba and Gifford PInchot coined the term intraprenuering… and taught oodles of companies how to engage their work force in this …. if you want to make everyone a CEO of their job learn from the masters…
http://www.pinchot.com
While it intoxicating to get entranced be the sexiness of new minds and vigor let's not forget the elders who blazed trails and still have some chops that the whipper snappers can get their arms around!
I loved that article and wrote a post about it yesterday (http://www.boydsays.com). It’s really about effective management which requires allocating your responsibilities effectively and then holding people accountable. Calling people CEOs does a great job of capturing that. The part I don’t like is letting the team fully choose their roles. You definitely want input, but as the CEO, you have to ensure that responsibilities don’t overlap which leads to decision committies, and also that there are no responsibility holes which lead to things that don’t get done.
[...] an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years and is the co-founder of Foundry Group. This post originally appeared on his blog, and it is republished here with [...]
Fear is the most powerful motivator. Fear protects life.
If someone is confident in themselves, you should make sure to put them in a situation where they will struggle.
Make skill meet challenge. People want to push themselves and get better. If not, they aren't playmakers and are irrelevant anyway.
I've always tried to do this and have been successful with my direct reports. The real challenge is to have this attitude be reinforced by all managers within a company. It's simply not enough for the CEO to behave this way if you're going to build a big company.
Cute solution!
There is a long list of things that could go wrong, one of the worst being various cases of 'goal subordination'. E.g., middle managers can fight with, hold back, or retaliate against the receptionist, i.e., the employee acting as 'CEO' of their work.
So, have everyone declare in public of what they are the 'CEO'! NICE! Now when a middle manager starts to cause trouble, the receptionist can stand their ground and say that they are just doing the work of which they are the accepted CEO.
Of course, there could be some conflicts in the declarations!
How well the receptionist's decisions work out on performance, time, effort, money, etc., many people will see. Employees who make good decisions rise.
Nice!
Since the phones are of interest to nearly everyone, it can help if the receptionist builds consensus for the proposed solution.
Of course, might have an 'empire builder' who deliberately makes decisions to spend more money, hire more staff, get more power than necessary, use the power to throttle others, etc. For small decisions, give a person rope enough to hang themselves. For large decisions, may need some reviews. More generally, need people with a good track record of making good decisions and not building empires, etc., and developing such people, e.g., the receptionist who rose to manage the office, is part of the goal.
That former receptionist built some career success with a track record, credibility, and responsibility — praise, approval, acceptance in the desirable group, and both emotional and financial security (E. Fromm) — and may be reluctant to blow this situation on low quality work, silly empire building, goal subordination, arrogance, etc. and, thus, be a trusted, valued employee. Nice. The CEO needs to notice this situation and provide the praise, etc.
E.g., once I had a mad rush project and had to make some decisions quickly. One piece of equipment was maybe optional but seemed like a good idea; since there was no time to be sure, I guessed and got the item. Later circumstances meant that didn't need the item so returned it. Then one manager started to criticize me for getting the item to begin with.
Easy answer: My project overall was very successful (for the Board and literally saved the company, now famous). I acted as 'CEO' of that work. The main issue, as 'CEO', was that the project was on time and successful for the very important goals. That little item of equipment was a nit and close to irrelevant, "straining over gnats and forgetting elephants", and the CEO needs to let it be known that such destructive, 'Monday morning' nit picking at the significant accomplishments of others is not good.
As employees such as the receptionist do well, they will get attacked from above, below, and the sides, and the CEO has to anticipate, detect, and deflect such attacks and defend the employee doing well or risk having that employee not try such a project again. E.g., if the CEO hears person A is saying something bad about person B, then the CEO may conclude that there is more wrong with A than B.
"Playmakers". Nice!
Great thoughts Brad.
One thing I would add though is that in my experience CEO's are often on a different lanet to the rest of the company. They think differently, have a different perspective and generally run in front of the rest of the people. If everyone was doing this it could create quite a degree of chaos AND who would be there to help them. CEO's seem to be very good at delegating to other people
Hi Brad-
Pincus runs a development company for the most part and while in the USA the CEO idea might seem cool in Asia as a whole it does not work.
Regardless of the term I think titles are important. But what also is important is stock shares and cash incentives. What motivates people is knowing they are earning good money and are building a future.
I think that many people do not really understand the responsibility that comes with the job title CEO. If someone is CEO then they should and would be expected to work long hours, stay up all night if needed, manage jobs and projects that maybe they do not fully understand but are willing to go the distance to figure it out.
Perhaps this terminology is part of an effort to manipulate workers. Lets break it down to its core. The real CEO wants people to take on roles in their job to help make the company successful. Giving workers a pep talk is part of the manipulation and giving titles is certainly part of this thinking.
As I mentioned in Fred Wilson's blog http://bit.ly/9nPASq my company earns money from completed work in a development ticket system. The more workers in a month the more income I make. So if calling someone a CEO makes them work better so that I can earn more billable hours of income then lets call "team-managers" – CEO's. In my company or at least in my experience having power in Asia is important.
I think it comes down to results – A.K.A. – Output.
We are building many new companies per year so as the super-stars in my organization rise to the top pf the pile then I would like to make them CEO of a new company. But if I have 10+ development teams each with 12+ developers using this CEO thinking I would have 10+ CEO's. Plus if I own 30+ corporations then I need a CEO for each corporation. We are nearing 60 CEO's quickly and once these individual companies get 20+ staff members in at least 25% of the companies then I have nearly 100 CEO's. I think Manager as a title works just fine
So what is the top guy who runs the company called?
Maybe this is an American thing…….seems to not work for me.
What types of business does this work for?
Regards – Lawson
At Rally we follow some core principles which are a foundation for the way the company works. In reference to this topic is the principle of "Create your own reality" followed by "Make and meet your committments". These seem to be congruent with this message and it is great to have the executives support you as you do this and learn along the way. There will always be missteps. However, it provides a foundation to continually challenge yourself, explore what is available and take ownership to creating your role and impact. It certainly makes for a much more interesting place to come every day.
As someone who has worked with Rally from the beginning, these core principles are evident in both the business and how everyone within the business operates. And the result – which is a fantastic, growing company – is a testament to all of your efforts!
Enjoyed the post, thanks Brad. I like to think of this as a "risk versus reward" scenario. Enabling and empowering your team to tackle stretch responsibilities may be problematic initially, but with optimal mentoring the long term gains outweigh the initial risks. I would suggest this is one key behavior that leaders need to focus on if they wish to rapidly scale their business and organizations.
Love the concept…I'd expand it a little and suggest that people be the CEO of their own lives.
YES! Can you imagine how amazing this country (and world) would be if more people thought this way?
[...] to solve problems, and take charge of their work. A follow-up post on Feld Thoughts, called Be the CEO of your Job takes this discussion further: Assuming you are in an entrepreneurial organization, are you being [...]
Nice post. It’s testament to Mark's management style, and also thought provoking. I think it also points to two other things about solid leadership:
1.Surround yourself with competent people
2.Encourage a culture where people are not afraid to fail
The secretary was not a phone specialist, but with the encouragement from Mark, she became one. She was competent, empowered, and not afraid to fail. Good entrepreneurs know that it’s better to fail trying than to not try at all.
Mark Pincus and Bing Gordon (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) spoke at the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture Series in October 2009. During the presentation, Mark gave other examples of ‘Be the CEO of your job’. It’s worth a listen (about an hour, so listen during your workout). http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.ht...
Hmm, I was thinking along a similar line. But I also wonder, do most people WANT to be the CEO of something?
[...] is the idea of being really good at one's job. A lot of buzz was made about the CEO of Zynga giving ownership of one thing to each employee when the NYTimes article detailing his leadership approach came out. I found a lot of gems in the [...]
[...] or break the big picture, are you really driven to do your best work? Compared with, if you are the “CEO of your job”, making a clear [...]