Amel Karboul

Martin (CEO) called on the phone Friday 5pm:
Martin: “I need to talk to you, I want to make a decision if I want to continue working with my CFO or not! You know him, what do you think?”
Amel: “If you ask me if you should fire him or not, I am not going to give you an answer. However lets talk about what is going on in your mind right now. I can help you make your own decision based on your criteria and observation and reflect with you consequences for the business and for the organization.”

During our conversation, we found out the following main issues:
•    Martin was not happy with the performance of the CFO nor was the top team. The CFO did not follow up on decisions made by the board if he did not agree personally, he would say yes and then act differently upon his convictions.
•    We also found out that the CFO who was part of the organization since 25 years was hoping to become CEO himself, he never accepted Martin – an outside newcomer – as a boss. And the two were too different in their styles. Martin was suffering because of this lack of acceptance.
•    The CFO had a lot of fans and high acceptance within the organization, Martin was afraid if he would fire him, that he will have an “internal rebellion” perhaps even sabotage and the organization was in a difficult turn around situation. Read the rest of this entry »

Situation: Daniel K. is new CEO of a mid size company in the US. The former CEO has been there for over 20 years and has run the business very successfully. The US Business is 100% owned by an Austrian company and is part of a global network. Daniel has been chosen for mainly two reasons: 1) he should rejuvenate the business, bring in fresh ideas and 2) bring in a global mindset and increase communication and cooperation of the US business with the “mother” company!

Daniel’s Challenge: he knows about his strengths and areas of development and seeks for feedback from his board and direct reports regularly, BUT he was not really aware that people were not judging him on what or how he was doing things but on how he was doing it compared to the old CEO! The key word here is compared! There were some feedbacks and reactions he could not understand or interpret.

Approach: He did a stakeholder analysis (pdf download!) and went then asking for expectations from his important stakeholder on:

1. What should stay the same?
2. What should be different than before (more of, less of)?
3. What should come on top, new things which were not taken into account so far?

Reflection: it is not about Daniel actually doing everything other people expect from him, but

• about knowing their expectations – since people judge us on how much we do fulfill or not their expectations – and
• about understanding their reactions – why they were allergic to some proposals – and
• he also could then have a concrete picture about what the board was talking about when they gave him feedback on his personal achievements – he had the so called base line, he could build on – and
• he could see where conflicts of interest popped up and engage in dialog to solve them

common sense but not common practice