The CEO as Master Detective

The most important thing in your company is internal culture. A certain continuity and peace within a company is the thing that makes it grow. Over my years in business I have seen how this internal culture if nurtured will make your company and everyone in it succeed. I have also seen how one person operating against that culture, however, subtle they act and no matter how good they are at their job can destroy everything you have created.

Let me explain.

We live in age when emotional intelligence is at a premium. The hiring and the firing of employees in any company is not only time consuming but let’s be honest demoralizing. It’s that combination of hope and experience: hoping that the new employees are going to turn out okay and then, sometimes, despair as an employee corrupts and corrodes all that you have set out to build.

For any CEO reading this you know what I mean. And, I know you’ve been there – we’ve all been there. It’s those type of destructive individuals that spark the office politics. That’s when the ‘virus’ really starts to spread. The more the staff are talking about each other the less they are talking about the operation and the slower the whole thing becomes. Office politics never produced anything except a tense atmosphere and bad blood between people. You know that sense of people walking on eggshells or not talking to each other? Remember? Well, who needs that in the work place.

So what to do?

Well, as with any ‘cancerous growth’ it has to be removed. But before I tell you what you really don’t want to hear. There is something else you have to do. Listen to and get to know your staff. People are complicated. A staff team will consist of a variety of personality types with different needs and different aspirations embedded into their work and what it means to each of them. As tiresome as it may at first appear, you need to understand each of your team and their needs.

Just a quick word on what team culture and its building up is definitely not.

It is not an open plan office.

It is not beanbags strewn around a room with pot plants.

It is not free candies in the office kitchen.

It is not a dartboard or a pool table.

These are all gimmicks, harmless more often than not, but still gimmicks unless you understand the people who are using them.

What builds culture is talking to people. So go and find out what motivates each team member. For some it’s money, for others its recognition, for others the need to achieve, for some its about team work, and for others it may be more individual still. It’s your job as CEO to meld them all into a winning team. When it comes to emotional intelligence you need to be ahead of the game and the team from the-get-go. And if that seems an almost impossible task then there is a quick solution to this. Employ someone whose job it is to fine tune the emotional intelligence within your company. Hire someone to fix these problems before they occur and then sort them out once they have reared their ugly heads. You’d do it for other parts of the business so why not in this realm too?

Now to the bit I have been avoiding talking about. You’ll understand why I’m avoiding this when I say it is about something no one enjoys but something, sometimes, we all need to do, namely, that is to sack someone.

I’m not talking about sacking the incompetent, or those who are just not performing, or even those who done something that warrants immediate dismissal. Those situations warrant action that is not just necessary but relatively straightforward. No, what I’m talking about here is having to sack your best employee or even your co-founder.

You like mystery novels, right? We here at Mount Bonnell love them. We should. Our offices are on Baker Street, London, that’s where the fabled home of the Master Detective, Sherlock Holmes existed on the pages of Conan Doyle stories.  You know the drill: in each tale the detective goes somewhere and finds out who committed the crime. He uses his skills to find the criminal and then bring that person to justice. Well, as CEO you have to detect the ‘crime’ I mentioned earlier: namely, destroying your company from within. The culprit may be highly competent. They may be performing at a level you would have not even dreamt of, but this makes no difference to their overall effect on your business. Their influence is a bad one. In short, that person has become toxic.

It’s tough to fire that individual. I know I’ve been there. You’ll never regret it though, not in the long run. And, let’s be honest: what is the alternative? Like any illness, if it is not eradicated then it will eradicate you. Think about it.

So take a look around you and, like any good detective work out who the ‘villain’ is and then … well, you know what you have to do. Don’t you?