Once, when I had volunteered to speak to a group of seventh and eighth grade students as part of career week at North Allegheny School District, I posed the question: “OK, so I am a CEO, what does that mean to you?” One of the youngsters answered: “That means you are the big boss and get to tell everyone what to do, and that’s pretty cool.” I told them that’s what a lot of people think, but it really doesn’t work that way.
I showed them an inverted pyramid organization chart, where the “big boss” is really the customer. The customer can fire a whole company in an instant by deciding not to buy that company’s products or services. The customer who writes the checks is the one who can really tell everyone what to do.
Making a real difference
Directly reporting to the customer are the people who interface with the customer, including sales, service and customer support personnel. They are the people who “are the company” as far as the customer is concerned.
It is the person a customer talks to face-to-face, over the telephone or, nowadays, online who makes the most difference — not the CEO.
Of all the products and services you purchased this past month, did you buy any of them because of the CEO? Can you even name the CEO?
I’ll bet, however, that you can recall a favorable experience you had with a customer service representative who did a good job of handling your issue. Maybe he or she agreed to free return shipping on an item, and you thought: “Now, that’s a great company.”
Keeping the wheels turning
Next on the organization chart are the people who design, develop and manufacture the products that the sales, service and support personnel deliver to the customer.
These are the marketing, engineering and manufacturing employees of the company. They decide what to make, design the product and do a quality job of manufacturing it.
Below them are the folks who provide necessary infrastructure to keep the company operating. These are the accounting, IT, legal and regulatory personnel who keep the books straight, file the tax returns, cut the payroll checks, run the computers and make sure the company obeys all the laws that apply to it. All of these people keep the company running smoothly.
Creating an environment for others
At the bottom of this organization chart are the managers and executives, and then finally the CEO. The CEO actually works for everyone else above him or her.
The CEO’s job is to create the environment for success, so that all those people he or she works for — who do the real work of the company for the real boss, the customer — can do their jobs, and do them well.
Large or small, companies that put the real “big boss” at the top of their organization will create a company culture that is aligned around the customer and fuel consistent growth.
