Technusatsu, I am very empathetic to your point, though it's different than mine. There's a difference between a bungie boss (which you find at large corporations, not small to medium size businesses) that shuffles the existing team's priorities in such a way that nothing ultimately gets done and results in a cancellation of a product.
Unlike large corporations, at small to mid-size firms, the "new boss" is already very familiar with the issues, particularly the back burner items that need to get addressed. Usually this is lower level stuff that bubbles to the top and eventually needs to be addressed, as acknowledged by everyone.
That's a completely different scenario than the bungie boss who is generally clueless as to what is going on. While you work at a large corporation, I'm sure you can discern the difference between a bungie boss at a large corporation and a seemless boss stepping in to take leadership over key items that have bubbled to the top.
As for a large corporation, I do not like the impact of bungie bosses on teams. But I could see the value of having a female executive lead Intel for one month, probably as a co-COO, in terms of different policies to retain women as well as to provide some insight into a truly untapped market (hightech is way too geared towards guys rather than women, and one could write up about dozen whiteboards full of product and strategy ideas to target women consumers, otherwise that's money left on the table.) Different perspectives are extremely useful. I learned a lot from others when I put someone else in charge - that's when you really learn about your strengths and weaknesses. It's not a poor reflection on anyone, but an acknowledgement of the importance of a diversity of ideas in order to tap all markets.
By the way, I think Paul O is very insightful in marketing and extremely gifted. He's also probably one of the best communicators in hightech (I like listening to his speeches just to learn his speaking style.) I think Craig B is excellent at retension as measured when he was COO. (In general, at most companies, the COO spot controls retension policies more than a CEO).
It can be very, very easy to pluck women out from under any large corporation due to simple things such as policies (small companies have been draining large corporations of their female talent). At a small to mid-size corporations, you can have a spoken policy that grants women the right to have more control over their travel time (like not travel during their 3 ovulation days per month so they can get pregnant.) At a large corporation presided over by male baby boomers (the generation that brought you the sexual revolution but is too scared to bluntly talk about effective policies for women), they would turn beet red at the thought of even discussing such a topic (they probably would feel they'd have to check in with a lawyer to make sure they even could discuss such a thing). This is one small example out of many. Another example is for $100/employee, I can tap (if I wanted to) the best female talent in Silicon Valley by granting them a $5k increase in take home pay (at the cost of only $100 to me), by simply changing a health care policy (that would cost the female employee a few $K at a large company since it's an uncovered benefit). So guess who wins women, when the unspoken things are not discussed at large firms? Small to mid-size businesses managed by Gen X's. You wouldn't believe some of the things that have been shared with me over my career by both men and women that would never be told to a traditionalist executive - and in return I've received a great team.
Regards,
Amy J |
