The way I was raised matched, in almost every respect, the most typical profile of people who become CEOs. I didn't do it by design. But as I have studied the research done on this topic, a remarkably high percentage of CEOs have these elements in their background:
- They came from a middle-class family with a manager/professional father and a stay-at-home mother.
- They were the oldest or only male child.
- They went to a traditional school that emphasized reading, writing and logical thinking, and were both disciplined and self-disciplined. In many cases they attended church-affiliated schools (for example, a statistically exceptional percentage of corporate CEOs, especially in banking, were educated by the Jesuits).
But there are two other myths that managers on the rise often hold. As these managers mature, they usually learn these myths are false.
Myth One: It Gets Easier at the Top
This is an understandable belief. You look at the CEO and see that he has subordinates who handle the mail, book appointments, and provide chauffeur services. In terms of the hassles of daily life, it appears that CEOs have an easy ride. The reality is that the reason other people do all of those things is that your time is totally consumed by other activities that are even more demanding and certainly more stressful. You have the responsibility for peoples' lives and money. You are required to act quickly with less than full information on developments that might take months or years to unfold.
The parallel myth is that if you are a good manager, eventually run themselves. While the "it gets easier" myth attracts people on the way up, a more dangerous trap awaits the manager who believes that, with the right kind of process, structure and incentive systems, he can make his company a perpetual motion machine. From then on, duties will be handled automatically and than he is free to become a "statesman."
The creation of this myth is an understandable human phenomenon. You have said the same things so many times that you expect that even people new to the company should understand them. So you spend less time communicating. After the twentieth year of quarterly budget reviews, they lose their appeal. So you do fewer of them or delegate them to someone else. Or, since you visited all the plants and the big customers three years ago, there's no need to do that over and over again. But you have to do it just as well, and with just as much energy, the thirty-fourth time as you did it the first time. If you don't, things start to unwind. That is why many senior executives finally realize there is a finite amount of time that you can do the same job before you run out of ideas, or energy, or willingness to do things with the same intensity. You need to be "repotted" or return to a lower point on the learning curve to reestablish the sense of novelty that goes with doing the job as well as you can.
Myth Two: Life Is Better at the Top
I would never denigrate the advantages of an executive career. Financially you have great flexibility. There's enormous opportunity for the development of your skills. There is a satisfaction that comes from the sense of control and influence that few professions can match. There is variety, an opportunity to learn about the world, to deal with interesting people, and be spared many of the irritations and frustrations of day-to-day life. But having said all that, it is not necessarily a better life. Many executives assume that all good things come as they move up to the top. That thinking sets them-selves up for a bad fall.
As you earn more money, the reality is you won't have the time to spend it. You spend money to "buy" free time, but time will still be in short supply. You will have more prestige, but that is not the same as respect or affection. Those come from your character, not the job you hold. The position will attract people, and you'll have lots of contact with others. People are nice to you, so it is easy to assume that you have many friends. But those relationships are colored by your ability to affect other peoples' lives. There is nothing inherently wrong with these kinds of contacts, and they are enjoyable. But you need a healthy understanding of the one-dimensional nature of such relationships.
At the end of a book on executive careers it may seem funny to have the author tell you that the top is not all that it's cracked up to be. I am not saying that it is bad, or unpleasant, or not worth pursuing. There are many, many advantages. Your time and effort in becoming an effective manager will be both satisfying and worthwhile. My point is only that it doesn't automatically bring the other dimensions of a satisfying and well-rounded life. There's a tendency both among people on the way up and those already there to assume that success in the business world automatically brings the rest of life's good things. And while it's not true, the real problem with this thinking is that it then makes you terribly nervous about ever losing that executive job because you begin to believe that everything good in life is tied to it. The good news is that since the job doesn't bring all the important things along with it, it can't then carry them away. That is a very hard reality to embrace. Which is why I wrote the essay which is the last section of this chapter. It may also be why so many people called or wrote to say it either helped them or that it was something they found very useful in bringing up this subject with someone else that they loved and saw as being trapped by their fear of failing.
On Top of the World-and Afraid to Fair
You are at 25,000 feet, descending into yet another city where people are waiting for you. There are important things to do. You are a senior executive and have risen higher and achieved more than you even dreamed of 20 years ago. Your income is so high that you mentally round it out to the nearest $100,000. As another year begins, you look ahead and conclude that you ought to feel that you are on top of the world, except for one thing: you're scared to death.
Success is not what you thought it would be. It is not a cradle or a hideaway. It is a cage, suspended from the ceiling by the thinnest of threads.
Welcome to the club.
Regardless of how high you are in the corporation and how much power you possess, you can lose it overnight. Just as tension spoils the golf swing, the fear of losing your job becomes paralyzing and makes the loss more likely.
Fortunately, there are a few relatively straightforward ways to eliminate this fear. The fact is that failure is not fatal, but most of us can't picture ourselves outside of our current comfort zone. Here are three exercises to relax the tension and reduce the fear:
* John Rau, "On Top of the World-and Afraid to Fall," The Wall Street Journal, January 8,1996. Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal. ©1996 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
GET PAID AT LEAST ONCE FOR A SKILL OR HOBBY
It's easy to feel trapped by the job market and worry about how you would ever find something else that pays, especially with all those other people out there. The reality is that we all have marketable skills such as writing, speaking, consulting, or designing and selling things. It is how we "package" these with fixed expectations in a single administrative role at just one company that makes us less digestible by the traditional job market.
So identify the skills you could turn to over the next six months. Make an effort to get at least one client for your services. It is important that you get paid; psychologically, when you have done it once, you believe you can do it again. You can always tell the client that you are doing this to give the money to charity if he wonders why you are insisting on payment.
LIVE WAY BELOW YOUR INCOME FOR THREE WEEKS
I'm talking about 20-25 percent of your current standard of living, excluding housing. Obviously you cannot sell the house as part of this experiment, but in every other aspect, budget and live that way. What most people find is that the big expenses that have to be cut are the ones that you took on to prove to other people that you could afford them, not the ones that give you any particular pleasure.
DO A FULL-SCALE LIQUIDATION DRILL
On paper, liquidate everything you own-house, car, gadgets, investments. Call a real estate agent in a town with a major university where you would like to live. Find out what it would take to rent a good townhouse (here in Bloomington, Indiana, the most luxurious three-bedroom townhouse is $825 a month). Apply 40 percent of your assets to living costs. Calculate how many years you could live with the other 60 percent buying an acceptable lifestyle in a vibrant community.
These exercises will convince you that being trapped by the money is mostly in your head. But then you'll say, "It's not just the money. What will I do; who will I be?"
We are programmed to achieve, to please others. We're convinced that the external symbols of success are what bring satisfaction and draw people to us. We have seen people who were the center of the crowd one day only to be shunned six months later because they lost their jobs or suffered major reversals. This identity fear is also the central issue I see working with executives contemplating merging or selling their companies, or facing an executive succession. Here the visualization and experimenting exercises take a Utile more effort. But those who can visualize alternatives generally handle these transitions more successfully. Here are the drills:
SPEND TIME WITH A COUPLE OF PEOPLE WHO PURSUE SATISFACTION BY CONSTANTLY CHANGING THEIR POSSESSIONS AND STATUS SYMBOLS
Find a person on his or her third trophy spouse. Pick out the one whose cars and houses must always be upgraded. Try to pin down the ones who cannot sit still because there is always another exotic place to be. How do they make you feel? Ask yourself whether this is how you would like your son or daughter to be when he or she grows up. Ask your spouse and kids to list the things that they like about you, and how they would improve your relationship with them. You'll find they won't mention your job or talk about money. They'll talk about being a partner, knowing more of what is going on with you, having more time, feeling more loved, and seeing you more happy and relaxed. Keep their lists and read them whenever you feel anxious.
WRITE YOUR OBITUARY
Make it long, what you hope your mother, father and your favorite teacher would like to read. Think about when you are gone and what you would like the obituary to say, not what it would say today given the trend line you are on. If you are like most people, you will tear up the first draft because it will be about accomplishments, successes and positions in organizations. You'll realize you want it to be about character, doing useful things, being a good partner and exceptional friend. Put a copy in your locked desk drawer and another in the secret compartment of your briefcase. Read it every morning, and whenever that trapped feeling hits.
Obviously, you do not need to quit your job because of these fears. In fact, doing these exercises to deal with the fear will result in your doing the job even better and enjoying it more. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said, "You would teach me how I may hold my own and keep my estate; but I would rather learn how I may lose it all and yet be contented." Lily Tomlin put it more succinctly: "The trouble with the rat race is, even if you win it, you are still a rat." The trap believes that your life is only your career. The solution is just a simple change of perspective. Understand that your career should be living your life your way. Be comforted that the world cannot take away anything from you unless you give the world the power by making those external things your only source of satisfaction.
