Hack:
Create multiple CEOs

By Madhusudan Rao - Solution Architect at NTT Data

August 31, 2010 at 3:24am

Moonshots

Retool management for an open and borderless world

Summary

As an organization grows from few hundred millions to more than a billion, you need people who manage the various groups with a characteristic of a CEO. He/she should be given the freedom to run his portion of business like a CEO runs his own company. The current CEO becomes the "Chairman" - CEO of CEOs.

By doing this, the individual is given the freedom, responsibility, power - all that will help in motivating the him/her to go to the next level.

Problem

Organizations grow fast and very often, they do not know how to cope up with the speed of growth. Leaders who can manage 100 individuals will not be able to do the same with 1000.

How does one grow leaders in the same speed (or faster) as the organization?

This hack tries to suggest a way to develop leaders faster.

Solution

Identify a set of Leaders who are well-known, already occupying a range of portfolios
Empower them with responsibilities that a CEO can take
Provide them with the targets to be achieved over a year
Senior Management to have 'Board meetings' every 6 months with each CEO to review progress.

Practical Impact

It gives a very good feeling to the 'CEOs' of the organization. Is it just a title change? No.

All responsibilities of the group are taken by the CEO, whether it is the Investment decisions, Strategy-making, Recruitment processes, etc along with the regular tasks (Sales, Execution).

Once the portfolio is enlarged, the CEO has a larger breadth of vision and starts having a bigger picture. Automatically, the organization gets beneftited by this approach.

First Steps

Implement this concept in one of the smaller groups, watch how it pans out and refine the model for the larger organization.

Credits

The organization, Satyam, had followed this principle earlier and it worked. Thanks to the vision of Ramalinga Raju (the fallen emperor), these strategies were implemented. Some points of the vision are captured at http://archives.digitaltoday.in/businesstoday/20061105/cover8.html

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September 10, 2010 at 3:09am

Rohit Kashyap

Hello Madhusudan
I have read your hack with the following criteria in mind:
- The need is to evolve out of Command & Control. Does the hack define an alternative?
- The alternative must be compelling. It must recognize the need to overcome the constraints of time, energy and motivation.
- An alternative without the use of technology is unlikely to succeed.
- The alternative must create a constructive collective by intrinsic means, i.e., desist from 'brain-washing' personnel for discipline and organization.

Bill Nobles in his hack on Freedom has done tremendous groundwork to arrive at the action promoted by you – the breaking up of Command & Control. Perhaps philosophy is an extremely important ingredient of transformation. Bill has supported his hack with excellent examples of success from where he has developed his philosophy of Freedom and smaller units run by people who will promulgate Freedom. Bill acknowledges that the philosophy of Freedom is quite dependent on the leadership. Thus it is not really intrinsic. Freedom is a great concept but will need something more than missionary zeal to become a movement for transformation.