Wars Are Won on the Battlefield, Not the Command Post Top 5 Reasons Why Getting in the Trenches Matters It’s not easy being CEO. With all of its privileges comes much responsibility. Your staff and every employee in your company depend on your leadership. As companies grow, however, the opportunity for personal engagement and involvement diminishes. There are plenty of valid reasons why, but for your troops, no excuse is entirely acceptable. Like every great general, the genius is finding the balance between ruling and serving. You set the tone and plan the strategy from the command post but your job isn’t complete until your troops are willing to fight for your cause. In order to win their faith, you must prove you are ready to fight alongside them on the battlefield.

1. Wars Are Won on the Battlefield,
Not the Command Post
Top 5 Reasons Why
Getting in the Trenches
Matters
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2. 1
“How well to American Workers know their senior leadership?”, Career Builder survey, 2012.
2
Michael Haid & Jamie Sims, “How Leaders Drive Workforce Performance,” Right Management, 2012
40 % of workers say they have never met their CEO1
21% of workers do not know what their CEO looks like1
35% of workers can name all of their C-level officers in
their organization1
Fewer than half of the nearly 30,000
respondents rated their immediate
managers and senior leaders as
effective.2
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3. While CEOs are viewed as the head of the company, sadly few employees feel like they know
their leader.
Loyalty, commitment and trust are hard to win if your employees don’t know for whom they are
fighting. According to the 2014 Highest-Rated CEOs report by Glassdoor, the top rated CEOs share
these common traits:
CEOs communicate clearly on where the
company is headed, how it’s going to get
there, and how each employee plays a vital
role on this path
CEOs are accessible, personable and
transparent to employees
CEOs know how to motivate their employees
and rally the troops to get the job done
“It’s great to know the people who are working hard every day for your success and let them know who
you are as a person, not just as a figurehead.” – Gregg Kaplan, President and COO of Coinstar
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4. Although it may be challenging to find time to develop
relationships with shareholders, partners and employees
alike, research shows those CEOs who can manage it
have the most successful companies. CEOs cannot
operate secluded in a command post. Employees are
increasingly demanding more from their leaders and in
the culture of social media, a company’s
reputation can be won or lost by its
employees.
Executive leaders must get their
hands dirty and fight with the soldiers
on the front lines.
It’s not enough to direct from afar and assume
your troops are willing to fight the same battles you
are.
This eBook will help management understand the top
reasons getting in the trenches matters.
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5. 1
Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-2012-extraordinarily-high/.
2
Peter E. Friedes, “The 2R Manager: When to Relate, When to Require and How to Do Both Effectively”.
3
Stanford Graduate School of Business & The Miles Group, 2013 CEO Performance Evaluation Survey.
CEOs now make 273 times the average worker salary.1
This number automatically puts you at a disadvantage when it comes
to how your employees feel you can relate to them. You have to earn
their trust and respect in spite of the salary gap. The best managers
relate well to their employees but also set strong requirements for
performance.2
80% of managers say they think their staff is satisfied with them as a
manager whereas just 58% of employees report this is the case.
Most CEOs are so focused on the bottom line, they spend little time
on developing crucial people skills that create engagement like
listening, conflict management and mentoring.3
CEOs are often viewed by employees as being
out of touch
1
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6. Regular brown bag lunches
Skip-level meetings
Employee input policy
Routine Twitter updates and blogs
Frequent site/departmental visits
Monthly meetings with
representatives from all major
departments
Management-by-walking-around
SOLUTION: Know what’s going on and establish personal relationships.
In order to be informed, you must establish personal relationships with your troops. Here are a few ideas to
encourage communication and help you bond with your biggest asset – your people:
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7. 1
Kets de Vries, “The Leadership Mystique.”
2
American Management Association.
“Inaccessibility of leadership is a common problem. Lofty and
unapproachable, they shield themselves behind a battery of secretaries,
assistants and closed-door policies.”1
A major hurdle to approachability is the propensity for silos. When an
organization is rigidly departmentalized, getting heard by upper
management seems nearly impossible and poses a risk to anyone who
attempts to circumvent established hierarchies. Some say they want open
communication, but few successfully implement a process for it. Credibility
and trust suffer.
83% of executives said silos existed in their companies and 97% think they
have a negative effect.2
Employees feel CEOs are generally inaccessible.2
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8. When meeting with
people, remove all
distractions
Listen
Keep an open door policy
Think before responding
Practice humility
Smile
Don’t negate a positive
statement with “but”
Be sincere
Take your job very
seriously but not yourself
Keep things confidential
Keep your promises
1
Source: James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner, “Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lost It, Why People Demand It,” 2011
SOLUTION: Encourage open communication and defy hierarchies.
“Credibility is gained in small quantities through physical presence. Leaders have to be physically present,
they have to be visible, and they have to get close to their constituents to earn their respect and trust.
Credibility is earned via the physical acts of shaking a hand, leaning forward, stopping to listen, and being
responsive. By sharing personal experiences, telling their own stories, and joining in the dialogue, leaders
become people and not just positions.”1
Other Ideas:
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9. 1
The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2014, http://www.ceochallenge.org/.
2
David Larcker, Stanford Graduate School of Business.
A recent study found of the 1,000 company CEOs, presidents and chairmen surveyed from around the
world, the most pressing challenges they face is Human Capital – how to best develop, engage, manage
and retain talent.1
When CEOs are independent from the majority of their staff, it is impossible to understand the skills of the
people around them. Often the best talent is right under your nose and if you don’t leverage it, another
company will.
Many executives are adept in interacting with senior executives, usually in a boardroom setting, but they do
not have extensive exposure to them or other direct reports outside of the boardroom or detailed
knowledge about their skills, capabilities or performance.2
CEOs don’t understand the human resources
available to them.
3
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10. 1
Source: The Conference Board, The Institute of Executive Development, and Stanford University,
“How Well Do Corporate Directors Know Senior Management?” 2013
SOLUTION: Get to know the talent working for you.
Taking the time to understand the various skill sets of not only your direct reports, but those of your
management team can have a tremendous effect on their morale and your internal talent pool. It’s a win-win.
Here are a few suggestions from the experts:
Require a formal talent development program with
real board involvement
Connect talent development with succession
Insist upper management plays an active role for the
development of his or her direct reports
Measure and reward progress
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11. 1
John Spence, “Awesomely Simple.”
2
Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton, “The Strategy-Focused Organization,” Harvard Business School Press, 2001
“The reason there is a disconnect between the CEO and/or senior staff and the rest of the
organization is that senior staff are talking about vision and strategy a lot, so they feel like
they’re communicating, but typically one or two levels down in the organization, people have
no idea what the long-term vision and strategy are.”1
With no understanding of the company’s overall goals and how their work is tied to them, employees
may blindly follow company policy without regard to how it impacts customers or the business.
Only 7% of employees fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of
them in order to help achieve company goals.2
The organization isn’t hearing corporate initiatives.4
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12. SOLUTION: Tie every employee’s individual goals to corporate strategies.
“Successful CEOs facilitate top-down translation of organizational objectives into departmental and
individual goals at each level in the hierarchy through the performance management system; expecting
‘back office’ functions to work to the same high-level objectives as the strategic side of the business and
having to demonstrate the value of their contribution by sharing information across departments.”
Weekly two-way feedback mechanisms will help continually align employees to the goals and give them a
chance to report on any issues.
Source: Ksenia Zheltoukhova, Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, “Leadership – Easier Said than Done,” May 2014
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13. CEOs are unaware of potential issues until it’s
too late.
5
Once a company gets to a certain size, CEOs no longer have direct influence on the day-to-day
work and priorities of every employee. Without a clear vision and an effective system to
consistently gather information from throughout the organization, surprises become the norm. By the
time the problem hits his or her desk, it’s often too late to make course corrections.
Even at the managerial level, getting timely information from employees is a challenge.
“When managers don’t have enough time
to supervise their people, they tend to
manage by exception (acting only where
there’s a significant deviation from what’s
planned) and often end up constantly
firefighting.”
Source: Frankii Bevins, McKinsey Quarterly, 2011
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14. SOLUTION: Implement processes and tools that offer visibility into key metrics
to minimize surprises.
They key to managing issues is early intervention. CEOs aren’t
expected to mediate every potential problem, but having the right
system in place at every level of the organization that utilizes real-time
data will ensure issues are properly routed.
The first step is to have a clear vision and a set of corporate goals
the CEO owns and manages every quarter to drive company
priorities, adapt to changing business conditions and engage
employees.
The next step is to communicate the expectations across the
enterprise clearly and often.
On the battlefield, surprise attacks cause the most casualties. Implementing a few strategies can help an
organization become more nimble and able to withstand anything that comes its way.
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15. KHORUS.COM
You’re not in this battle alone
As hard as a CEO may try to relate and bond with
his or her employees, there just isn’t enough time
in a day to establish the kind of relationships
many would desire. Fortunately, there are
methodologies and technology available to help
CEOs be more efficient to maximize their efforts.
If you want to learn how to step out of the
command post and onto the battlefield, Khorus
can help. Khorus is the only management system
to give CEOs a hierarchical view of the entire
organization which ensures employees are
aligned, engaged and working in harmony to
achieve corporate goals. To learn more about
Khorus solutions, please visit the Khorus website.
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