Make sure the employees got the message. I do think a CEO can have a significant impact on the culture, the direction, the vision of a company. I do think to a certain extent, however, that the greater personality, the greater effectiveness comes from the people that surround the CEO.
I guess what I’m getting at, the only way you’re ever going to know if the message gets across is if you have people around you that you trust to not only transmit the message but also be able to support it, further refine it and explain it.
One really good CEO who has a weak management structure underneath them can only do so much.
The key to our company is our show managers, and if we had layers, that’s the third layer. So we spend a lot of time trying to make certain that our show managers get it.
We find it’s not that hard (to measure whether the message was heard). The metrics will be different in every business. We’ll see it immediately with sales numbers; we’ll see it immediately with satisfaction numbers from exhibitors. You can tell it on a show floor.
Understand the importance of consistency. For a CEO, I think consistency means everything. The pressure on a CEO now is so much greater than it was three or four years ago because this is a different business model, this is a different world.
The consistency is noticed by people. It’s when there’s stops and starts, when there’s, ‘Oh wait, this was the message six months ago, but we’re going to do this.’ It’s a whole notion we are building this thing at this company — is it on a solid foundation or a shifting foundation. And at least for us, I can’t say about any other business, our consistency is our strength. There’s no doubt in my mind.
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