The CEO in the story had no clue what he was doing. But he was facing the same problem everyone has when the outcome of your actions takes time to manifest. Much too often society expects that results change immediately after a change in leadership. But the small changes a leader can make take time to ripple trough the organization and manifest in results. Often people are not patient enough to wait for this.
A real life example for that is Paul O'Neill CEO of Alcoa from 1987-1999. His main change was putting worker safety in Alcoas plants to first priority. The business outcome of this action manifested years later.
During the first 6 years of his CEO career the stock only doubled. In the 6 years after that the stock prize rose to almost 10x of the prize where he became CEO.
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this big effect also was related to the Dotcom double.
It is an old joke, it has been told about Presidents, and various other figures.
Thinking long term is not something that is rewarded next quarter, in general.
This is a large part of why I've worked over half my career for non-public companies. I want my management making the best choices for the product and the company. Not what Wall St. will like.
If the invisible hand worked... yes they would be the same. Reality says they aren't.
So what's the practical solution to this issue? If you focus on the long-term but have no short-term impact, you will not be there to see things play out (As Milton Keynes famously said "In the long term, we're all dead").
My guess is you need to figure out some small wins along the way that make people feel good and stop them from panicking and tossing you (and all your long-term plans) overboard.
To add supporting evidence, here's something from 41 years ago where the butt of the joke was the leadership of Soviet Russia, and the inheritance was 2 letters:
A man yells in the street: "Nicholas is a moron!". He is taken away by the police on charges of lese majeste (insulting the monarch). He tells the policemen "Please let me go, I meant another Nicholas!". The police chief replies: "Do not lie. If you said 'moron', you certainly meant the Tsar!"
That was then. In 2023, in the USA, try standing in front of your local police department and explaining the simple, statistically likely, fact that they have at least one sexual predator working there. They will physically abuse you until you leave. If you refuse to leave, they will send you for a mental evaluation. If you still resist, they will kill you.
>In 1970, Anna Halprin organised a "Blank Placard Dance" by members of her San Francisco Dancers' Workshop. They paraded, dressed in white, while holding blank placards. She explained, "...there were so many protests going on and this way each person watching us could just imagine whatever protest slogan they wanted on the placards."
It's nice to be able to protest with blank signs because you want to make a joke, and not because of fear of arrest.
Funny, I remember this specific joke from my childhood.
My dad would bring home photocopied jokes or cartoons from work. It's funny to imagine someone making 50 copies of one of these, then passing them out around their workplaces laughing with their co-workers.
15 years later you saw the same stuff in email, fwd: FWD: FWD: Re: Why American is great
That makes me think of children's book I saw once, The Rabbi and the 29 Witches. The titular Rabbi convinces them that he arrived dry because he danced between the raindrops.
There are plenty of techniques to reach the NYT bestseller list; new internet matketers pay famous internet marketers to tell their followers to quickly buy their new book, hopefully in many copies, often with the cost fully or largely refunded.
The book is usually about how to reach the NYT bestseller list.
I think the other version I'm familiar with is a Navy captain or new minted admiral - especially in the age of sail - someone who has to operate on their own for a long stretch. Looking around I see a bunch of variations:
- the CEO or other corporate leader
- a government leader (sometimes specifically Soviet or British)
- a pastor or abbot
- military officers of various ranks
- a distinctly non-leadership corporate role that can catch a lot of flak (sysadmin)
I wonder how old it is? How far back would envelopes have made sense? Do you suppose Ea-Nasr left three bullae to his successor?
/1/ Say something humane, play for employees' and shareholders' trust.
/2/ Lay off thousands of workers. Squeeze out a blandly sorrowful text and a few cold tears.
/3/ Take the money and run, don't trouble yourself about leaving any envelopes. But if you have a pang of regret and must leave something, leave your little plastic bottle of cold artifical tears.
> The CEO: You are here because your investment is about to be destroyed. Its every active employee terminated, its entire balance-sheet eradicated.
> Neo : Bullshit.
> The CEO: Denial is the most predictable of all stakeholder responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.
A real life example for that is Paul O'Neill CEO of Alcoa from 1987-1999. His main change was putting worker safety in Alcoas plants to first priority. The business outcome of this action manifested years later.
During the first 6 years of his CEO career the stock only doubled. In the 6 years after that the stock prize rose to almost 10x of the prize where he became CEO.
Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this big effect also was related to the Dotcom double.