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- Everybody lies to the CEO
Howdy Girdleyworld!
Any CEO or business owner can tell you: You can’t believe anything you hear.
And it makes decision making way harder… but you still have to do it. So today…
how I deal with fog of war.
Let’s do it!
Quick story.
We were running 360 reviews for the executives at one of my companies. (Where people from all different levels and relationships give feedback.)
All the answers about one exec were super short, with no specifics.
Just, “Yeah, he’s doing a great job.”
But I had to ask myself… what is this guy doing all day?
It turned out, he hadn’t even been coming into the office. Everybody knew, but they didn’t want to get in trouble, or assumed somebody else would speak up.
We only got the truth after we fired him.
The “tools”
The fog of war — not knowing what’s going on outside your immediate surroundings — is a constant challenge in business.
And the truth is, there’s no perfect solution for it.
First, there are all the tools you can use to chip away at it (can you chip at a fog?):
360 reviews
Skip level meetings
Walking the floor
Exit interviews
None of these get you the whole picture, but they can help a little.
“Just trust the numbers!”
Yes, many numbers are useful indicators of your business’s health.
But they can still lie.
At HoldCo Conference this year, one presenter told a story that made my skin crawl.
He’d been running his company by the numbers. Every week the dashboard looked great.
But in reality the company was drifting closer to a cliff…
Because his accountant was making up the numbers.
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My best trick
If I really need to figure out what’s going on at a company, I only have one really effective trick.
Find somebody you trust.
Send them in on a month-long consulting mission.
They interview everybody. Sit in on all the meetings.
And figure out what the heck is going on.
But you don’t always have a month, or a person you can trust.
So sometimes it comes down to…
The mindset
Approach everything with a critical mindset.
And then accept that you’ll never have the whole picture.
A great quote I heard (feel free to attribute it to me):
“A good leader is someone who can make decisions and, right or wrong, navigate the consequences.”
—
One more thing — trust your gut.
It’s usually more right than you’re willing to admit.
If you’re seeing red flags in someone, get to the bottom of it — now.
Because aside from the momentum, money, and time it costs your business, there’s an even bigger problem: you start to question your convictions.
You wonder, “Is this person struggling because the business is broken?” (No. They’re just not performing.)
Young Girdley was constantly giving people the benefit of the doubt.
I’d wait for “proof” that a leader wasn’t working out, and people stayed too long because I wanted to be nice.
My bar for that is way lower now — and my businesses are better for it.
—
That’s it for today!
Now it’s your turn to tell me: what do you do to find the truth?
Thanks for reading,
Michael
P.S. I did a little housekeeping recently and made a new resources page — where you can get all my free downloads in one place! Check it out here.
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