The CEO Plaint: A Better 100 First Days

. . .that soul imprisoned in a body, itself a prisoner within that dungeon, and from out that double incarnation of flesh and stone, the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony . . ..
-- Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

I was struck yesterday by a book I was reading, George Bradt's The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan, and an item in Business Week noting that 1,112 chief executives are gone this year and CEO turnover is on a pace to exceed last year's record 1,322 exits. So what do those 1,000 -plus new CEOs do to get themselves and their troubled assignments on the fast track?

In Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, Louis Gerstner, Jr. had a positively leisurely time going around talking to customers, senior managers and the rank and file before he came up with his strategy. In today's nanosecond business world, two Wall Street quarters go faster than a New York minute for troubled companies, and there wouldn't be a new CEO there if it wasn't a troubled company.

So I was struck by the single minded on-boarding focus of George Bradt. He's got it down. Like the pre-planning for Operation Overload's D-Day invasion of Europe, Bradt's approach comes from preparation (that T-minus D-Day planning), delivery and follow-through. He recognizes that the success of the CEO's team requires the alignment of people, plans and practices around a shared purpose.

It all sounds pretty simple. Bradt has a very clear approach on how to manage the different stages of on-boarding. I also checked out his website at www.primegenesis.com. He looks to increase the Tactical Capacity of the new leaders.

Interesting, huh. Tactical Capacity not Strategic Capacity. Oh yeah, you can have those long-night sessions to develop strategies or hire the top Big Think shops. The best strategies, though, can be written on a napkin in a bar or put together in forty-eight hours. Then what do you do in the next 2,352 hours (viz. 98 days)?.

Bradt's got it down. You define your

• Imperative
• Milestones
• Early Wins
• Team Roles
• and Values

You execute like crazy. Heady stuff? Sounds too easy. Well, remember that 40% of new leaders fail in their first 18 months, according to the Center for Creative Leadership. And those men and women weren't stupid in the first place. They and the Boards that selected them thought they knew what they were doing. The cost of that failure is millions of dollars and possibly thousands of lives -- not just the life of the CEO.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins found that most CEOs don't get their businesses humming until their seventh year in office. Wow, if you're a new CEO, you better be good real fast. Those first 100 days could be a real agony of the soul for the toughest Al Dunlap. Good thing George Bradt's got it down because the best way better be up with some pre-planning and a sound tactical approach.

Postscript: Who's Looking In My Drawers

Truer than what I said the other day:

Today, the New York Times did a feature on Aleksey Vayner, an earnest 21-year-old Yale undergraduate who had sent a video of himself as part of his job applications.

According to the article, Mr. Vayner "submitted an 11-page resume and elaborate video clip to UBS. It then showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread to every corner of the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner’s athletic prowess, flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. And the overwhelming reaction was mocking laughter.

Mr. Vayner is not amused. Instead, he said he feels like a victim. The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in certain cases, threatening him. Since the video surfaced on the Internet, Mr. Vayner said he has deleted at least 2,000 pieces of e-mail."

I rest my case.

Who's Looking In My Drawers?

There is a huge irony in the fears about privacy and identity theft and the rush to pose on the social networking sites of myspace, facebook, tagworld.

In the media, you read thousands of stories about people having their personal data stolen and the actions that major corporations are taking at the same time to get people to sign up with them while promising protection (uumm, sounds like a Mafia come-on).

Do you really want to bank online? Have a portable electronic wallet? Share your personal data? Sign up for massive online storage sites for photos and documents?

And at the same time, ensure that absolutely no one else has access to your personal vault of life, love, money and the pursuit of happiness.

Well, heck yes. (But what about those Citigroup commercials where the voices of thieves come out of the bodies of their victims?)

Most online-active adults over 35 years old want it both ways.

But what about those under-35? Social networking is booming. Murdoch pays a fortune for myspace. Facebook will eventually be sold. Tagworld is a start-up by serial entrepreneurs looking for a payday. YouTube (your face, your life, your antics) is bought by Google. They are waving their online underwear like flag signals on a 18th century Admiral's battleship. If you can decipher it, you will learn everything.

Do those people who sign anyway their offline lives for an online network really care about privacy and security? Maybe not because they don't have anything really stealable? Except who they are.

That poor page who was victimised by Mark Foley was outed by a persistent blogger because of an online data error.

So let's see how do we reconcile social networking with privacy and security with theft.

Maybe the only safe place to live is in Second Life. Or never put yourself online.

How many Angels on a Pin or Messages on a M&M?

I want my M&M's my way. The coupon came in the Sunday paper today and I can get my M&Ms personalized. Also, I don't need New York Times or Evening News with Katie Couric or MSNBC.com. I have my RSS feeds so my information is delivered, filtered and focused the way I want it. And my cellphone is my life. I call who I want, get no solicitors and V-Cast gives me music, videos, email and news.

To paraphrase e.e. cummings: How do you like your blue-eyed blue now, Mr. Marketer. Emerging technologies and the delivery of media continue to spell Mr. Death for mass marketers.

The irony is that TV networks still charge ever higher rates for declining viewerships because they still aggregate larger groups than the other less trackable, less aggregated modes of communication.

However, like the elegant empty posturing in Agnolo Bronzino's 1569 mannerist painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Lorzeno, guess what? You're still going to die.

The challenge continues to be marketers, media mavens and technical inventors to develop the research tools and approaches necessary to identify trends and understand and meet the needs of their consumers.

Consumer goods manufacturers get this. They recognize the need to identify true consumer insights that will let them adapt exisiting products and develop new products to meet the needs of their consumers and to grow their businesses.

If technical inventors and the media communicators can come together and develop new research approaches, learn to mine and convert consumer insights into tools and message, then they will reduce confusion, competing formats, fragmented tools and messages and provide efficient, focused, relevant and motivating media.

Saint Augustine asked how many angels can dance on the pin? In a world of nanotechnology, the answer is infinite but the question is if the messages are hitting home. Really, it should be as simple as personalizing your M&M.

Does that pain mean I am going to die?

It is a deceptively simple question. When you get that first twitch in your shoulder, that pain in your stomach, that ache in your head, how do you know whether you should go to the doctor or go to the drugstore.

It is amazing how little pharmaceutical or consumer products marketers understand about decision-making when it comes to those death twinges (see previous post about all consumer products being about death or sex).

Pharmaceutical marketers are focused on developing clinical trials that deliver primary endpoints that mean something to the FDA and physicians. But those endpoints may mean very little to consumers who are meant to buy and use the products.

OTC consumer product marketers spend much more time mining for those consumer insights that will be a call to action. When you get that headache, think Execedrin. When you get that stomach ache, think Rolaids.

But what if you need Imitrex because you really have a migraine or Nexium because you have acid reflux disease.

Understanding the decision making that goes into healthcare decision-making can be a key driver to improved care and cost management. Am I consumer or a patient? Am I dying or not? That insight can save lives and money.