I'm not a star CEO

Some CEOs like to put themselves in the limelight whenever they can. They enjoy the public scene, they never miss an occasion to show themselves as if the CEO appearance ratio and stock price have a direct correlation. Some enjoy driving obscenely expensive cars in public to showcase their wealth and social status. To me, this is the road to perdition for shareholders, customers and yes even employees.

Me, I’m just a regular guy from Pembroke, Ontario and you won’t see me flashing my butt in some high-profile social event. Instead, I’ll be at the office drinking black coffee when everyone has gone home and I’ll be crunching numbers like crazy.

I was reading that Montreal’s underground water system is so dated that 40% of the water leaks before it reaches its destination – homes and businesses. How a city government could be so incompetent and negligent over the years is beyond comprehension, is the last retard-in-chief just got re-elected. Go figure. That’s what people want, I guess.

A good CEO has to drive the vision but also micromanage the details and fight the evil where it hides. Underneath a spreadsheet row or column, that is. If 40% of my revenues would leak before it reaches our bank accounts, I would go ballistic. This is why I see myself as the Chief Plumber Executive, one who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty and who is ready to lift every stone to make sure things are done right. If there’s a leak somewhere, I want to be the one who spots it first. I don’t trust my trusted lieutenants.

I like to get involved in a lot of minute details and this drives my staff totally crazy. Sure they’d prefer a CEO who’s not involved in the day-to-day stuff because they’d have more liberty to accomplish their task, and people don’t like it when someone is breathing down their neck.

But you know what? If nobody watches you then you become lazy like those veggies working for the City. You become so lazy that your assets crumble in ruins and nobody cares anymore. Someone has to run the circus and focus on the fundamentals. So my apologies if I make your life a living hell and you need to run every decision by me and only me. I guess you’d rather see me in a talk show discussing world events rather than checking your expense report, don’t you? That won’t happen. And the result is this.

This is what profitable growth is about.