Among the many tasks of a CEO probably the hardest and most beneficial is to obliterate SHEEPWALKING. The term comes from this post by Seth Godin who defines it as what happens when you hire “people who have been raised to be obedient and [give] them a brain dead job and enough fear to keep them in line”

The opposite is: ‘At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, too many cats to herd, too little predictability and way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. ” – also quoted from Seth’s article.

Here’s why it’s so hard. Running a company you’ve got way to many things to do. You’re looking for things to control. You don’t do it consciously but creating a culture of sheepwalking is a comfortable way to run a company and think you are in control. In fact, you really are in control. And that’s the problem. The things you can control in a company don’t guarantee success. At best they only prevent catastrophic failure. At worst they cause the failure albeit slowly so you don’t realize what’s happening.

Why? As I’ve said before, business is like sex where success depends on the interaction between you and the other person. The control you think you have in your company is all about you – not about the other person and it limits the kinds of interactions and responses your company will have. Plus it limits the types (and number) of people you’ll be attractive to.

This may have worked in the old days when the markets didn’t change very much, and the types of interactions were limited. But that’s not true anymore.

Takeaways:

• You can’t build a successful company on sheep.
• You have to create a culture where innovation, risk taking and creativity get rewarded, NOT sheepwalking.
• That’s your job as CEO.

Technorati Tags: Small Business, Entrepreneur, Management, How to be CEO