More Bad CEO Stuff

• A lot of people “do not think they have the time to take an hour a week to write about their problems.” What they actually mean is they think it will be boring or unhelpful, and do not see it as a good tradeoff to take whatever pain they may encounter (being bored) for the potential gain (which may be done). A lot of boss-types, I’d noticed, cannot stand to be bored. They really want to keep moving. And sitting down and reflecting on what is not working actually is very painful for them. But that doesn’t mean that not doing it doesn’t lead to acute and real problems that they and their team have to solve later. (Or not solve — because see above, anything bottlenecked on the CEO the CEO would not be working on as a problem, versus just continuing to do whatever has been feeling good).
  

• A lot of CEOs do not actually have someone at the company they trust. It
  is always have preferably two “right hand men.” 1 may be enough. 0 is not enough. But they should have someone they are talking to. I have seen bad form in which the CEO turns the two against each other, to “get the best ideas out.” This is not great. don’t turn them against each other. ideally they should have a good relationship. have discipline here.

  and then do not decide through either arrogance or personal flaws that you do not actually need them anymore, can no longer trust them, or have “good reasons” to “dismiss their thoughts” because “they don’t actually understand the situation as well as I do”
  

• also do not start deciding you are “too busy solving the actual problems” to simply “not have 1-1 meetings with your people” -- especially if certain people are really insisting they need a 1-1 meeting

  I have seen these patterns a few times now

  What happens is the leader ends up from having some >1 number of trusted sentinels acting as both sensors and actuators in the system that is being run, to 0

  the sentinels usually try to do the best they can in this new low-transparency lower-trust environment, and cover up for the leader “having a bad time.” sometimes this can go on for a long time, especially if they themselves have leadership functions, do want the org to do well, and can collaborate with each other to some extent about the hardship. depending how the leader reacts, this is either a bump that the team bonds over later for moving past, or it destroys the organization
  

• If you do not like a bunch of work, but that work is someone else’s field, then probably they have optimized for getting good at something you hate. Hating it doesn’t actually tend to make them better at their job, unless you decide to get out of their way and use their best judgment. Hoping that their thing becomes an entirely different thing usually thrashes them at their job. Chances are, they know what sucks about the work they are doing and know what tradeoffs exist around it and what bad thing happens if the work simply does not get done.