Tom Asacker

• Home
• Tom's books
• About Tom
• Thought pieces
• Contact

Watch highlights from Tom's speeches

 

Crisis and obsession

According to the Wall Street Journal, a series of gambles put the energy company Constellation Energy Group's very existence in jeopardy. And it was their brush with bankruptcy that awakened their leader.

Prior to the company's crisis, CEO Mayo A. Shattuck III believed that leadership was all about mission, vision and motivation. Not any longer:

"I don't assume anymore that execution will simply happen because they're all really smart people -- which they are -- and wait to see the numbers after the fact. Now I question everything. I leaned too heavily on the notion that leadership was setting the vision and motivating people around it. Now I need to balance that with getting dirty with the details."

Question everything. Get dirty with the details. It's about time.

Crisis provides an opportunity for change and growth, or it causes regression and stagnation. It can put you further to sleep or, like a bucket of cold water in the face, it can wake you up.

It appears that Shattuck's organizational heart attack has awakened him to his true role as a leader. It has also created a bit of an obsession.

Obsession in and of itself isn't bad.  In fact, it's good if it advances your mission and brings meaning and happiness to your life and to the lives of others. It's bad, however, if it interferes with your growth; as an organization and as a fun-loving, compassionate human being.

Unfortunately, most organizational crises create paranoia and, as a result, micromanagers obsessed with procedural trivia. Getting dirty with the details is not the same thing.

Micromanagement is an obsession with the inconsequential details of people's work. It's a waste of time and results in disengagement, at best. On the other hand, getting dirty with the details is an obsession with one's brand; the strategic essence of the organization.

In his book, "It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For," author and ad man Roy Spence, Jr. recounts a marketing meeting with Herb Kelleher where Spence lobbied passionately for Kelleher to give passengers something more to eat than peanuts:

"Herb, damn it, give the poor people a Snickers bar to bump up their blood sugar so they won't pass out and sue us."

Is a peanuts vs. candy bar decision a CEO's purview? It depends. Is it trivial or strategic? Here was Herb's response:

"Roy, let me share a simple thought since it seems that simple is all that you can understand. Here is a pack of peanuts. It costs 12 cents a pack to give out. Here is a Snickers bar. It costs 38 cents to serve -- not counting the overhead bin space that Snickers would take up over peanut bags, which I will get to in just a minute if you can follow this tiny little logic trail. So there is 20 cents difference between a bag of peanuts and a lousy Snickers bar. But what is 20 cents to an ad man, one might ask? Well to you it is only 20 cents -- to us it is twenty cents times 3 million customers, and that is $600,000 PLUS the overhead bin space and the extra weight which will cause us to burn more fuel and god knows how much that would be!"

Kelleher was obsessed . . . in the right way. He was obsessed with the value of his offering. Herb understood that, like an artist laying down globs of paint, it's the aggregation of small details and purpose-defining decisions that make great organizations great.

Many organizations are in crisis mode today. And there's nothing wrong with that, so long as the pressure-inducing situation creates the right obsession; an obsession with strategic differentiation.  An obsession with the details that matter to everyone and which will truly make a difference in the long-term essence of the offering, and in the improvement that it makes in people's lives.

Posted February 18, 2010
Email this post     

The comments to this entry are closed.