While the business world is often
viewed as a cold and impersonal
place, Paul Hobby believes that successful companies operate with a
degree of humanity.
“I think people crave communication, and
it gets harder to accomplish as an organization grows bigger,” says the chairman and
CEO of Alpheus Communications. “They
just don’t want communication about what
the stock price did today. They want
humanity. They want vulnerability. When
the boss makes a mistake and admits
it to everybody, that’s very good for
the company. It says, ‘Hey, this guy is
not in denial. He’s willing to learn
from his mistakes.”
The optical network provider
now has 91 employees and posted
2006 revenue of $54 million, with
an average annual growth rate of
26 percent.
Smart Business spoke with
Hobby about the importance of
being a humble leader.
Q: What are the traits of a good
leader?
Vision and a willingness to provide affirmation and not just share
credit, but deflect credit to the people around you. If people understand that the success or the failure of the organization is your ultimate report card, they know you
are not out for yourself.
If the organization succeeds,
I’ll get plenty of credit. I don’t
need to go find it. And if it fails,
that’s all my fault, as well. I
think that stimulates the same
behavior in others.
It’s stamina. I have never been part of a
quality organization where the people at
the top didn’t work hardest.
Consistency. Just like raising children, if
kids know where their boundaries are
every day, they are happy. If the boundaries
are moving all the time, people don’t like
that kind of uncertainty.
As you get more authority, you have to
make more of a conscious choice to listen
because people will defer to you, and you
just can’t allow that. You have to make
them talk. That’s where the information in the organization lives is in the field. If I start
pontificating, they’re more than happy to
be quiet and listen to me.
That doesn’t mean I’m right. It just means
they are deferring to their superior.
Q: How do you communicate your vision?
Vision is passed along by communication.
That can be by e-mail, it can be laminated elevator pitches, it can be T-shirts, or it can be
notes in your lunch box. You have to make
decisions, and you have to communicate.
You have to work real hard to boil it down
to your essential elements, and you have to
bounce it off people who will be honest with
you. If it makes sense to you, but not to the
average listener, you’re not through. You
need to keep refining the message.
Q: What is a common mistake CEOs make?
You find people who mistake effort for
progress. To move those people to a different place in the company or to move them
out of the company is a painful thing. But you have to be outcome-oriented. You can’t
be time-oriented.
Somebody stays until 7:30 every night,
that’s nice, but it would be better if they got
their job done and left at 5. Part of that is
the hero culture.
Somewhere along the line, somebody
told them that if you stay late at the office,
you’ll impress the boss. Chances are the
boss knows what your productivity is, your
work habit notwithstanding.
Q: How can a CEO get employees to care?
People crave communication, and it
gets harder to accomplish as an organization grows bigger. Hang around the
water cooler. Tell sincere but self-deprecating stories. Be willing to put on the
bunny suit at the Easter party if that’s
what is called for.
I am more willing to be taunted in
good spirit by members of the organization and have been many times. If you
stand there at the coffee machine and
talk about your son’s football game last
night and what a heartbreak it was or
what a fool you made of yourself, that’s
wonderful. People want to work for that
guy.
Be sure to share customer feedback. Be
sure to articulate the big picture. We sell
bandwidth, which isn’t very sexy until you
realize soldiers are using that bandwidth
to communicate with their kids from Iraq.
It becomes a lot more significant at that
point.
Q: How can a CEO show leadership?
We have a rule that anything that goes
wrong is my fault. The purpose for that is
to encourage people to take risks they
wouldn’t have otherwise taken.
I own the mistake ultimately anyway. It’s
my business. I hired these people. I gave
them the authority to make the mistake, so
if I just say at the outset, ‘Hey, I own the
mistake, even if you made the decision,’ it’s
real good.
People step out a little bit, they spend a
lot less time with nonconstructive CYA
[cover your ass] behavior.
HOW TO REACH: Alpheus Communications, (877) 257-4387 or
www.alpheuscommunications.com
