A recent post on the A VC, called Empowering Your Team, explores the concept of making everyone in a team the “CEO” of something, such that they feel empowered to solve problems, and take charge of their work. A follow-up post on Feld Thoughts, called Be the CEO of your Job takes this discussion further:
Assuming you are in an entrepreneurial organization, are you being the CEO of your job? Is this culturally (and functionally) acceptable? Do you get rewarded for taking risks and succeeding (or failing) like your CEO does? If not, would you be more effective if you did?
But what is an entrepreneurial organization? Of course, typical start-ups fit this mold, but what about larger, older businesses? When it comes to the corporate world, many organizations are definitely not entrepreneurial as a whole, although they may have teams within them that operate independently enough to be relatively entrepreneurial.
The question is, if you work in the corporate world, and you want to increase your level of empowerment to get good work done, how can you do this? Good corporate managers will take advantage of the technique referenced above, and make the people in their team CEO of their job. I believe this can be done even in a large, corporate environment; a team within that environment is usually self-contained enough in terms of culture and authority over its work to make this work. Of course, there will be aspects of each person’s job that are dragged down by the non-entrepreneurial parts of the organization they are dependent on, but in many cases these are obstacles that can be worked around.
In a team where the manage is decidedly not the type to empower his or her team members in this way, there is still value in an individual appointing themselves as CEO of their job, and using this point of view to approach their work. Of course, this will require that the team member engage with their manager on new ideas, and it is important that these conversations take a constructive, collaborative tone, to avoid the team member coming across as too revolutionary or dismissive of existing policy. And the risks one is willing to take in the corporate world may be less dramatic, or at least more appropriate to that environment. Done with the right touch, though, a team member may even end up pushing his or her manager in the right direction.
This is a classic example of an excellent technique that should not be limited to the entrepreneurial world. While it is certainly easier to implement at a start-up, those in the corporate world can change their approach to their work by seeing themselves in this new light. Many large corporations have vision statements and corporate imperatives that encourage innovation and risk taking; if they are serious about these statements, then appointing people to be the CEO’s of their jobs is a great way to show it.
