Letter to my Successor
By Dr. Jack Lin, Chairman National Technical Systems, May 2005
May 10, 2005
Dear Bill,
I thought over this weekend what it has been to be a CEO. What have I learned over the last 40 years that I would like to pass on as you now take up this mantle. What is the CEO’s real function and what unknown factors affect that function? I would like to put in writing some unique thoughts about the actual work a CEO performs.
When we pick up a management book, it will talk about basic functions such as planning, directing, controlling, and communication, with much discussion on business structure, employee motivation, and leadership. There is one part that is not really discussed – that today’s organizations are in immediate flux and that change is both imminent and continuous. Management books discuss that CEOs must pick strategies for long-term growth while balancing the needs of present-day profitability. All of this is, of course, true, but I would like to dig below the surface and mention several other important functions the CEO must understand and perform.
1. The CEO must act as an arbiter between the external forces and the internal forces of an organization he controls. The CEO must have relationships with the customers, sales manager, and salesmen, and should attend many association presentations which discuss the external events. Today even small public companies are impacted by the globalization of the world economy, so he must also be aware of the international, national, and local economies and their tendencies.
At the same time he must understand the realities of his organization. He must understand the capabilities of his personnel, the state of art of his equipment, procedures, and processes, the business cycle of his products and services, and what the employees as a whole feel about themselves and their company. The CEO, then, is the critical link between the reality of the environment in which the company exists and the insularity and parochialism of the organization he controls. Indeed, one can summarize the CEO strategic planning as bringing the outside reality into the organization in order to modify and change it to conform with the future needs of its markets.
2. Second, the CEO must create an ongoing development plan for all of his people, especially his senior management. He must inspire them to grow – not by words, but by personal example. He must be willing to develop himself and make available to all his managers the ability to grow as human beings and as leaders.
3. The CEO must realize and have the intellect through his own knowledge or by use of capable consultants to determine the realities of his Company’s capability to grow and change. Stretching it too far can break it. Not stretching it will cause it to become pedestrian. Once the goals are established, the CEO must have the ability to clearly present these goals to the team members and persuade them to accept them. Excellent results in this area is achieved by incorporating the team into the goal-setting itself, which contributes to continuous growth of managers.
4. From my perspective and from the amount of study and effort I placed in Jungian psychology, I would add an additional concern. The CEO must be open to his idiosyncrasies and to the fact that his unconscious plays a major role in his actual decision-making process. The conscious contains all of the material previously discussed – all the issues that the CEO can be aware of about the environment around him, both inside and outside the organization
The unconscious contains two major areas which affect the CEO in a variety of ways: (a) the personal unconscious, containing one’s own life history with its greatness and its limitations, the parenting, teaching, and personal traumas the individual has successfully evolved through, and (b) the deep collective unconscious – the survival needs and the past successes of our species..
Our decision-making process is a combination of the conscious and the powerful unconscious forces that are blended together with our conscious knowledge. Indeed, we rationalize a decision when the conscious information in and of itself is illogical.
Since by definition we cannot see these unconscious forces, we must have a guide(s) who can point them out to us. It is important that the CEO has available a knowledgeable and trusted advisor, who can understand not only the environmental forces and conscious material, but also the unconscious projections that dance within the CEO’s psyche. Whether this advisor comes from the board, or an outside consultant this could well prove the most critical key to a CEO’s success.
Bill, over the years I have learned that my biggest challenges came from these unconscious forces more than the CEO challenges often discussed in the literature. I have been fortunate to have a few key advisors to support me over the years as I faced the myriad of issues a CEO must face, especially my own unconscious. The journey of the CEO is a powerful one not only for what you will do for the organization but for what the journey will do for you.
Dr. Jack Lin is the Chairman of National Technical Systems, an independent test lab servicing
the DOD, Aerospace, Telecom, and High Tech industries. Until recently Dr. Lin has been the CEO since founding the
company over 40 years ago. Over his long distinguished career Dr. Lin lead his company to be recognized as the
6th best performing stock for the 25-year period. You may contact Dr. Lin through us
at Info@quantumleaders.com
or directly at jack.lin@ntscorp.com.
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