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Wars Are Won on the Battlefield, Not the Command Post

Top 5 Reasons Why Getting in the Trenches

Matters

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1 “How well to American Workers know their senior leadership?”, Career Builder survey, 2012.2Michael Haid & Jamie Sims, “How Leaders Drive Workforce Performance,” Right Management, 2012

40 % of workers say they have never met their CEO1

21% of workers do not know what their CEO looks like1

35% of workers can name all of their C-level o�cers in their organization1

Fewer than half of the nearly 30,000 respondents rated their immediate managers and senior leaders as e�ective.2

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While CEOs are viewed as the head of the company, sadly few employees feel like they know their leader.

Loyalty, commitment and trust are hard to win if your employees don’t know for whom they are fighting. According to the 2014 Highest-Rated CEOs report by Glassdoor, the top rated CEOs share these common traits:

CEOs communicate clearly on where the company is headed, how it’s going to get there, and how each employee plays a vital role on this path

CEOs are accessible, personable and transparent to employees

CEOs know how to motivate their employees and rally the troops to get the job done

“It’s great to know the people who are working hard every day for your success and let them know who you are as a person, not just as a figurehead.” – Gregg Kaplan, President and COO of Coinstar

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Although it may be challenging to find time to develop relationships with shareholders, partners and employees alike, research shows those CEOs who can manage it have the most successful companies. CEOs cannot operate secluded in a command post. Employees are increasingly demanding more from their leaders and in the culture of social media, a company’s reputation can be won or lost by its employees.

Executive leaders must get their hands dirty and fight with the soldiers on the front lines.

It’s not enough to direct from afar and assume your troops are willing to fight the same battles you are.

This eBook will help management understand the top reasons getting in the trenches matters.

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1 Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-2012-extraordinarily-high/.2Peter E. Friedes, “The 2R Manager: When to Relate, When to Require and How to Do Both E�ectively”.3Stanford Graduate School of Business & The Miles Group, 2013 CEO Performance Evaluation Survey.

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CEOs now make 273 times the average worker salary.1

This number automatically puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to how your employees feel you can relate to them. You have to earn their trust and respect in spite of the salary gap. The best managers relate well to their employees but also set strong requirements for performance.2

80% of managers say they think their sta� is satisfied with them as a manager whereas just 58% of employees report this is the case.

Most CEOs are so focused on the bottom line, they spend little time on developing crucial people skills that create engagement like listening, conflict management and mentoring.3

CEOs are often viewed by employees as beingout of touch

1

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Regular brown bag lunches

Skip-level meetings

Employee input policy

Routine Twitter updates and blogs

Frequent site/departmental visits

Monthly meetings with representatives from all major departments

Management-by-walking-around

SOLUTION: Know what’s going on and establish personal relationships.In order to be informed, you must establish personal relationships with your troops. Here are a few ideas to encourage communication and help you bond with your biggest asset – your people:

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1Kets de Vries, “The Leadership Mystique.”2American Management Association.

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“Inaccessibility of leadership is a common problem. Lofty and unapproachable, they shield themselves behind a battery of secretaries, assistants and closed-door policies.”1

A major hurdle to approachability is the propensity for silos. When an organization is rigidly departmentalized, getting heard by upper management seems nearly impossible and poses a risk to anyone who attempts to circumvent established hierarchies. Some say they want open communication, but few successfully implement a process for it. Credibility and trust su�er.

83% of executives said silos existed in their companies and 97% think they have a negative e�ect.2

Employees feel CEOs are generally inaccessible.2

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When meeting with people, remove all distractions

Listen

Keep an open door policy

Think before responding

Practice humility

Smile

Don’t negate a positive statement with “but”

Be sincere

Take your job very seriously but not yourself

Keep things confidential

Keep your promises

1Source: James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner, “Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lost It, Why People Demand It,” 2011

SOLUTION: Encourage open communication and defy hierarchies.

“Credibility is gained in small quantities through physical presence. Leaders have to be physically present, they have to be visible, and they have to get close to their constituents to earn their respect and trust. Credibility is earned via the physical acts of shaking a hand, leaning forward, stopping to listen, and being responsive. By sharing personal experiences, telling their own stories, and joining in the dialogue, leaders become people and not just positions.”1

Other Ideas:

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1The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2014, http://www.ceochallenge.org/.2David Larcker, Stanford Graduate School of Business.

A recent study found of the 1,000 company CEOs, presidents and chairmen surveyed from around the world, the most pressing challenges they face is Human Capital – how to best develop, engage, manage and retain talent.1

When CEOs are independent from the majority of their sta�, it is impossible to understand the skills of the people around them. Often the best talent is right under your nose and if you don’t leverage it, another company will.

Many executives are adept in interacting with senior executives, usually in a boardroom setting, but they do not have extensive exposure to them or other direct reports outside of the boardroom or detailed knowledge about their skills, capabilities or performance.2

CEOs don’t understand the human resourcesavailable to them.

3

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1 Source: The Conference Board, The Institute of Executive Development, and Stanford University,“How Well Do Corporate Directors Know Senior Management?” 2013

SOLUTION: Get to know the talent working for you.Taking the time to understand the various skill sets of not only your direct reports, but those of your management team can have a tremendous e�ect on their morale and your internal talent pool. It’s a win-win.

Here are a few suggestions from the experts:

Require a formal talent development program with real board involvement

Connect talent development with succession

Insist upper management plays an active role for the development of his or her direct reports

Measure and reward progress

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1John Spence, “Awesomely Simple.”2Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton, “The Strategy-Focused Organization,” Harvard Business School Press, 2001

“The reason there is a disconnect between the CEO and/or senior sta� and the rest of the organization is that senior sta� are talking about vision and strategy a lot, so they feel like they’re communicating, but typically one or two levels down in the organization, people have no idea what the long-term vision and strategy are.”1

With no understanding of the company’s overall goals and how their work is tied to them, employees may blindly follow company policy without regard to how it impacts customers or the business.

Only 7% of employees fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company goals.2

The organization isn’t hearing corporate initiatives.4

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SOLUTION: Tie every employee’s individual goals to corporate strategies.

“Successful CEOs facilitate top-down translation of organizational objectives into departmental and individual goals at each level in the hierarchy through the performance management system; expecting ‘back o�ce’ functions to work to the same high-level objectives as the strategic side of the business and having to demonstrate the value of their contribution by sharing information across departments.”

Weekly two-way feedback mechanisms will help continually align employees to the goals and give them a chance to report on any issues.

Source: Ksenia Zheltoukhova, Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, “Leadership – Easier Said than Done,” May 2014

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CEOs are unaware of potential issues until it’stoo late.

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Once a company gets to a certain size, CEOs no longer have direct influence on the day-to-day work and priorities of every employee. Without a clear vision and an e�ective system to consistently gather information from throughout the organization, surprises become the norm. By the time the problem hits his or her desk, it’s often too late to make course corrections.

Even at the managerial level, getting timely information from employees is a challenge.

“When managers don’t have enough time to supervise their people, they tend to manage by exception (acting only where there’s a significant deviation from what’s planned) and often end up constantly firefighting.”

Source: Frankii Bevins, McKinsey Quarterly, 2011

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SOLUTION: Implement processes and tools that o�er visibility into key metrics to minimize surprises.

They key to managing issues is early intervention. CEOs aren’t expected to mediate every potential problem, but having the right system in place at every level of the organization that utilizes real-time data will ensure issues are properly routed.

The first step is to have a clear vision and a set of corporate goals the CEO owns and manages every quarter to drive company priorities, adapt to changing business conditions and engage employees.

The next step is to communicate the expectations across the enterprise clearly and often.

On the battlefield, surprise attacks cause the most casualties. Implementing a few strategies can help an organization become more nimble and able to withstand anything that comes its way.

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KHORUS.COM

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You’re not in this battle alone

As hard as a CEO may try to relate and bond with his or her employees, there just isn’t enough time in a day to establish the kind of relationships many would desire. Fortunately, there are methodologies and technology available to help CEOs be more e�cient to maximize their e�orts.

If you want to learn how to step out of the command post and onto the battlefield, Khorus can help. Khorus is the only management system to give CEOs a hierarchical view of the entire organization which ensures employees are aligned, engaged and working in harmony to achieve corporate goals. To learn more about Khorus solutions, please visit the Khorus website.

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