10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake

And HOW to put them to bed

Author: Elizabeth Coffey

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Business
Date of Publication: 2003
Number of Pages: 218 pages
ISBN: 0077099893
About the Author
Elizabeth Coffey The Big Idea
Elizabeth Coffey joined Mercer Delta
Consulting Limited in late August 2002 as a Liz Coffey and her colleagues coach top CEOs, addressing the 10
Partner and UK Team Leader for the primary concerns that keep them sleepless in their executive
Leadership Capabilities practice. Mercer suites:
Delta is a management consulting firm that
works with CEOs and senior executives of · Developing bifocal vision
major corporations on the design and · Getting the organizational structure right
leadership of enterprise-wide change. · Creating time to maximize impact
Previously, she spent five years as a Partner · Energizing the organization through leadership
and Senior Executive Coach with The · Delivering strategy through the top team
Change Partnership, developing a portfolio · Managing the board
of clients from top FTSE 100, top 250 · Communicating with stakeholders all of the time
companies and public sector organisations. · Meeting the diversity challenge
Her latest book on leadership was published · Surviving the global jungle
by McGraw Hill in October 2002, entitled 10 · Balancing work/life demands
Things That Keep CEOs Awake At Night –
and How To Put Them To Bed. She co-
authored the book The End of Tolerance?,
Each chapter is set within a specific context, sets a challenge, and
published in May 2002, outlining her
practical approach to business diversity defines the results -showing how each client was guided towards
issues. these desired results.

In 1999, Elizabeth co-authored The There are multiple pressures facing any CEO today. With rapid
Changing Culture of Leadership – Women technological advances, a greater risk when going into any
Leaders’ Voices – a research-based book
about women leaders in the UK. She led
international enterprise, and changing regulations, the
diversity development projects on gender, organizations of global proportions require a CEO who can
ethnic minorities, disability, organisational communicate, motivate, develop talent, push for growth and profits,
culture and national culture. run a multi-lingual, multi-cultural corporation…all the while
maintaining that delicate work/life balance.
In 1995 Elizabeth moved from Frankfurt,
where she had co-founded a consultancy to
design and deliver cross cultural programs
to German companies to help their Published by BusinessSummaries, Building 3005 Unit 258, 4440 NW 73rd Ave, Miami, Florida 33166
managers develop more effective global ©2003 BusinessSummaries All rights reserved. No part of this summary may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior notice of
management skills, to London. BusinessSummaries.com
 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

Developing bifocal vision

Bifocal vision means balancing your long-term vision for the company with your
short-term vision. Your main responsibility as chief executive officer is to develop a
clear vision of where your company is going. So you need three things:

· Time to think about your vision (translation: desired concrete results)

· Get clear on long-term and short-term goals
· Acknowledge that you don't have all the answers!

Also know when to be “hands-on” and “hands-off”. Some CEOs are such control
freaks, and are extremely anal about everything. Some are so engulfed by the big
picture that they fail to fix the small leaks.

Make sure you have a strong senior executive

Bifocal vision means balancing your long-term group. Because nobody can do it all by
vision for the company with your short-term herself/himself, you need to surround yourself
with a strong alliance.
vision of where your company is going.
The Client Profile in this chapter features a CEO
by the name of Matthew, whose challenge is to balance priorities between meeting
short-term profit commitments and positioning the company for long-term growth.

In this case, the issues Matthew had to deal with were those of selling or merging
with a competitor, lowering overhead and operating costs by $100 million, and
addressing the 3 key questions of:
· What is our current reality? (The reality check on the health of the company)
· What strategy will support a 30% growth in shareholder value over the next
3 years? (Vision for the business)
· What are the core initiatives that will get the company to this goal?

Reducing costs by over $100 million was a key step to bridging the gap between
what the current reality was and the vision the company had to achieve.

Building a more effective senior team entailed meeting in person on a monthly basis,
agreeing on decisions and issues that needed the full team's input, and reaching an
agreement on the annual goals for the business.

Chapter takeaways:
· No CEO can work alone. The senior team should be strong and solid.
· Spend appropriately balance amounts of time on both the short-term and
the long-term visions.
· Check in regularly with your team on the current reality.
· Check whether your initiatives are the right initiatives.
· Ask yourself if you are leading effectively.
· Does your leadership style fit this organization's culture and needs?
· How can you make compromises between your style and the organization's
culture?

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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

Getting the Organizational Structure Right

“It is a fact that organizational structures, no matter how cleverly constructed, have
quite a short shelf-life.”

Client Profile: Leisure Co.

· Industry: high street retail, travel, air
· 2600 employees
· £185 million turnover
· The “Rising Star” is Dermot, 38, a New Zealander, married.

The desired results were to diagnose Leisure Co.'s performance problems, identify a
more comprehensive way forward, and help
Because nobody can do it all by manage the boss's expectations.
herself/himself, you need to surround
The organizational structure was composed of
yourself with a strong alliance. 12 directors who reported to Dermot: air
operations, travel operations, high street, new
products, finance, customer service, IT, supply and logistics, health and safety, HR,
sales and marketing, and PR.

Dermot proposed a streamline structure combining functions:

Dir-High street, air and travel, marketing and new products, finance, and HR

The first major concern was that with an organizational reshuffle, an already stressed
workforce would have to further absorb this adjustment. Another concern was
conflicts were bound to emerge within different sub-cultures of separate departments
that would now be merged.

Chapter takeaways:
· Dermot understood the need for clear values and great people as part of a
great business.
· He considered the personalities, skills and performance of the top 20
people, deciding who to keep, replace, and re-program. The few who
refused to follow the new program would be dismissed.
· Dermot needed to define exactly what his people should achieve.
· Dermot believed in the old adage “What don't get measured, don't get
improved.”
· Managing Frank, the boss's expectations, was Dermot's priority
· As a leader, base your analysis on the hard facts, not assumptions.
· Ask yourself if you have shared your assessment with an advisor.
· What is your vision of the future that your people can use for their own
decision-making?
· Do you have the right people? If not, no amount of re-organization will deliver
the desired results.

Creating Time to Maximize CEO Impact

If you are CEO you may feel everyone wants a piece of you. From shareholders and
senior executives, to bankers, the media, analysts, to your family and friends. This is

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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

where it starts to feel lonely at the top. You may be surrounded by people, yet there is
nobody who you can confide your troubles to. One way to buffer the stress is to build
an effective team that can manage the workload, one that allows you to delegate
most of the running of the business. Most CEOs spend too much time in meetings,
addressing emails, faxes and interruptions, and give too little time to the work that
adds the most value, that of planning for the long-term and building relationships with
key stakeholders.

Client Profile: Girl, UK

Industry: high street teen and 20s fashion retailer
Turnover: £1 billion
CEO: Alice, age 46, married with 2 step-daughters from husband's previous
marriage

The desired result: To re-focus Alice's time on priority tasks, filter out
needless/superfluous information, develop strategies for dealing with media
attention, and gain an overall home/work balance.

How Alice Regained Control Of Her Time:

· She hired an excellent Personal Assistant who would filter out faxes, emails
and other correspondence.
· She booked fictitious meetings in her diary to free up time for thinking
outside of the office.
· Delegating tasks to her top team: Alice arranged for the Finance Director to
receive media training so he could take care of external communications.
· Before undertaking any task, Alice learned to stop and ask herself if she
should be doing it at all, and where it fit in the scheme of things.
· She reduced information she needed by asking for summaries, receiving it
in different bite-sized forms.
· She learned to trust her intuition and instincts.
· She would use 2 or 3 trusted colleagues as sounding boards.
· She built up her self-confidence by keeping a log/journal of her
achievements.
· She found other support systems/confidantes so she didn't have to burden
her husband with all her woes at the end of the day, since he had his own
problems at work to deal with.
· She booked time for her brother and close female friends --people she
could seek comfort from and relax with, so she could forget about the
pressures of work for a while.
· She made friends with like-minded contacts and set up quarterly lunches
with them.
· She scheduled time for regular exercise each week.
· She made sure that once a week she went home at 5 p.m.
· She was ruthless about not working on weekends.
· She booked regular holidays.
· She learned meditation, yoga and took quiet time for herself.
· She planned weekends away to spend time with her husband and
stepdaughters.

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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

Human beings cannot function effectively if they do not take regular rest and
exercise. No CEO should ever feel guilty for doing any of the above.

Energizing the Organization Through Leadership

It is key to find ways to energize the organization during the critical transition phase--
before, during and after installing the new CEO.

Company: Global Services Group

100,000 employees in 50 countries
English is the native language of less than 25% of the workforce
Strong European mix at senior levels
£15 Billion in revenue posted for 2000

Client: Roland Peterson, 45, married with 3 children

Served as Finance Director and CFO for 3 years

Agenda: To prepare for the role of CEO, to reshape the Corporate Center while
keeping finance running and initiating a series of strategic programs, and accomplish
all this while having fun!

Roland wanted a Corporate Center that

It is a fact that organizational structures, would be the best in its class, had transparent
no matter how cleverly constructed, have and performance targets that stretched
beyond current performance targets, and
quite a short shelf-life. would be a great place to work.

Through a series of off-site meetings with a very fluid agenda, group members were
able to air their negative feelings. The leaders were given a shock tactic, to take
charge and act more like the leaders they were expected to be. The shock tactic
worked. They immediately set about mapping their own future. A final team exercise
on the beach involved building sand sculptures.

Through further questionnaires, the core team revealed different work styles,
preferences, became more aware of diversity within team and the need for a
common leadership vocabulary.

Chapter takeaways:
· Rate your own commitment to energize the people on whom your own
success depends
· Define your wants around your personal, community, and business agendas
· Make a 12-week plan to bring these agendas to life
· What are your patterns that have hindered your biggest life achievements
and what helped you achieve your goals?
· Who do you surround yourself with? Are they the people who can support,
challenge and succeed you?
· Do you create time and space for regular reality checks?
· Who do you trust to partner and challenge you from the outside?
· Is it fun? Can you feel the energy?
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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

Delivering Strategy through the Top Team

Key questions:
· How can CEOs assess leadership capability in their organizations?
· How do you install a systematic process of key talent management?
· How do you develop the top team?

Company: Glaxo Wellcome

Industry: Pharmaceuticals
54,000 employees in 76 companies worldwide
Sales in 1997: £7.98 billion with a 5% share in the global market

Chairman and CEO Sir Richard Sykes recognized a big change was needed to
maintain the company's superior market position and Zap the Gap between required
revenue and projected income.

“We're in business to make money. But I don't see that as the number one priority; the
number one priority is to get the business right…Strong leadership, good people,
good product flow, bringing value to patients throughout the world…If you get those
right, everything else will fall into place.”

Chapter takeaways:
· The challenge set by Sir Sykes called for leaders of GW to think more like
entrepreneurs, foster a culture of innovation, learn to get comfortable with
ambiguity, continue learning across boundaries of functions or regions,
outrun the pace of change, and keep sharp focus on delivering the
business's demands.
· A leadership framework needed to be developed for GWs top 300 leaders.
· These people should be able to bridge the revenue gap caused by expiration
of patent on biggest selling drugs.

A 3-year timetable was drawn up entitled the Senior Executive Development

Program (SEDP). Three schools partnered in this endeavor: The London Business
School (UK), The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University (USA), and INSEAD
(France).

It was soon revealed that a leader of GW had to assume the roles of 4 people:
Entrepreneur (risk manager, visionary), Strategist (portfolio manager, decision
maker, big picture thinker), Integrator (relationship-builder), and Leader (Scientific
innovator).

GW's top people had to reach out to potential markets, build trust, harness self-
discipline and create peer support. The business deliverables were met such as
increased dividend, a strong research and development program, restructuring to
focus on customers and double-digit growth.

Managing the Board

Client Company Profile: Henry Grafton (HG)
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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

Industry: Importer of toys and games, manufacturer of toiletries and homeopathic

medicines
Turnover: £280 million
The CEO: Steven Frost, 42, married with two sons
Worked 8 years at Unilever and 2 years at Andersen Consulting

The Challenge: Gain credibility with the board since his becoming CEO was not a
unanimous decision; some felt he lacked hands-on experience in toys, while
developing a growth strategy

The Plan: Position toy business by moving sales manager and team. Get rid of toys
director either through sale or redundancy, and use board vacancy to promote the
sales manager, and gain one friend on the board.

Tools: A PR company to frame his communications of the drastic changes and help
with improving relations with board members and stakeholders.

Chapter takeaways:
· The chairman must be a strong supporter of the CEO or else decisions
come to an impasse
· Who is against you and who is for you? Why?
· Who stands where on key issues?
· Are you really in charge here?
· Have you made a good impression on all the key players?
· Are you getting your priorities supported?

Communicating With All Of The Stakeholders All Of The Time

A CEO must be careful in all communications he releases to the board, directors,
banks, investment fund managers, analysts, auditors, lawyers, employees, the
media, customers, and suppliers…tough, huh? Always remember your
communications must be used with extreme care.

Company Profile: Op Co
Industry: Utilities
CEO client: James, 50, married with children

The challenge was to craft messages for all

A personal portfolio should define priorities stakeholders, unite members through a
communication program, inspire the team, and
and shape contributions of members to meet develop relationships in a hostile situation.
the needs of the organization. Taking into consideration James' nature of
conforming to the crowd rather than wanting to
stand out, he preferred an open, consultative style of leadership.

How James Communicated His Message:

· He freed up time to plan his communications.
· He organized off-site meetings which lasted a few days.
· He frequently visited various company locations.
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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

· He used video communication to send regular messages to staff.

· He worked closely with a PR director/professional.

Chapter takeaways:
· Control your emotions.
· Understand your audience first.
· Communicate facts more than feelings.
· Seek win/win solutions.
· Use travel opportunities to communicate directly.
· Be visible.
· Use the chain of command to communicate rapidly.
· Share scenarios with your team to give a head start in a crisis.
· Understand non-verbal communication and its power.
· Emails can be easily misunderstood or taken out of context, pick up the
phone or meet in person.

Meeting the Diversity Challenge

Notice how the BBC celebrates diversity? Greg Dyke, the Director-General, once
commented the BBC was still “hideously white”, and since then his commitment
grew into transforming the BBC into a strong multi-cultural force, with more visible
minority ethnic personnel and issues in programming. The BBC became more of a
reflection of modern UK culture. These diversity initiatives improved the BBC's
image as employer of choice, and enhanced the organization's reputation as a
whole.

Client Profile: The Civil Service Commission

480,000 employees

The initiative: To develop talented ethnic minority civil servants to prepare them for
top Civil Service positions in the next 5 years, and raise awareness of this move,
among other desired results

The Plan: Pathways Launch, website, Group Away Days (off-site meetings) and
work exposure, developing confidence through progress monitoring.

Surviving the Global Jungle

With international pressure groups constantly watching your every move, a CEO
needs to be prepared for international management, or managing across borders.
Environmentalists will probably throw pies at you for your decisions, so it is best to
prepare for a global assault through Public Relations.

The Company Profile: Jefferson Inc

Industry: Manufacturing
7000 staff
Turnover: £1.6 billion

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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

The Client: Richard May

The Challenge: to demonstrate his leadership both to new owners and the
management team

Richard focused on tactical, short-term concerns, encouraged cross-cultural

relations by organizing working visits by managers to headquarters, monitoring
uncooperative staff and taking appropriate action, embracing an international
perspective over an insular one.

Balancing Your Act

Use the Personal Portfolio idea: A balance between the personal and the
professional.

Example:
Contents of a personal portfolio includes: guidelines, profile or biography, bullet
point summary, planned time allocations per year, key personal targets, a schedule
of client work, target billings, career plans, a personal development plan, work/life
balance plan, cost and revenue plan, business and budget plan, and a balance
scorecard.

A balanced Personal Portfolio allows for an individual's needs to work from home or
part-time, combine paid work with voluntary meaningful work, do work that utilizes
his skills, knowledge, values and experience, continue personal development and
learning, and maintain space for family, friends, and interests outside of work.

Company: Amorgos
Client: Mohan, married, 3 children
Spends his free time in charity work and chairs a network for senior ethnic
minority executives, writes for Management Consulting journal.

Amorgos' 25-member consultant team needed Personal Portfolios!

An A4 size D-ring binder divided into 10 parts was the physical manifestation of this
Personal Portfolio project.

Resolutions reached:
· Commitments made to deliver specific revenue amounts
· Commitments to mentor others
· Refocusing of efforts and priorities
· Commitments to writing articles for business journals
· Ten people to attend one conference a year
· Ten people to take training courses
· Top team gets executive coaching
· 8 are allowed to work part-time
· 20 are allowed to work from home sometimes
· Diversity within the team would be respected
· Family outings and weekends would make Amorgos a fun place to work.
· Jessica would be allowed to take paid time off to do a charity climb of Mt.
Kilimanjaro!

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 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake by Elizabeth Coffey

· Colleagues agree to cover W's surgery and recuperation costs.

· 4 teammates agree to cover for Rachel while she is on maternity leave.

Chapter takeaways:
· A personal portfolio should define priorities and shape contributions of
members to meet the needs of the organization.
· It is vital to keep a Balanced Personal Portfolio.
· It should acknowledge member's contributions individually.
· It must foster a sense of control over one's life and job.

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