I recently read an interview with a prominent Silicon Valley CEO adviser, Ben Horowitz, who made it clear the most CEOs have nowhere to turn to understand decision making of the type they must provide everyday.
There are countless business schools in America that claim to teach management and claim to prepare people to be CEOs.
I have been a consultant to many CEOs and never found a way to give them a body of knowledge or experience that would be useful. In most cases they have to learn from experience or from watching an able CEO who was above them for sufficient time to gain observational experience.
As a result of trying to find business schools or short term training programs for the CEO’s I advised, I created my own management class in my own small business school.
The school was called the Noren Institute for Small Business. We had classes in a variety of business subjects and took students to visit operating business. The school was aimed at Briarpatch type of businesses that were open, environmentally friendly, cooperative and innovative.
I had a great deal of trouble trying to teach management. I included in the course the fundamentals of personnel which can be taught and consists of many specific practices. One such is firing people. Firing must be done on a face to face basis with the person who made the decision to do the firing.
The issue of being a CEO was far too difficult to communicate and I failed.
The only advice I could give to those who were faced with the CEO circumstance, which includes daily presentation of at least 10 insoluble problems, is to always remember ‘you can quit and be an employee. Then you won’t confront 10 daily insoluble problems’.
I call these problems ‘insoluble’ because there is no best solution, there is no correct answer. Most CEO decisions involve postponing a decision and waiting to see if new consequences change the alternatives you have to choose from.
I wish there were a way to teach management for a CEO. The best advice is to take each problem as it comes up and realize there is nobody who can give you better advice or a final decision. Your peers as CEOs are among the few people you can turn to and they will only be emotionally supportive. They can not answer functional questions.