CEO's Diary: One small moment of inspiration

And continuing the online searching, I will save you the trouble of looking up "epiphenomenon": "a secondary phenomenon that is a by-product of another phenomenon".

Truly wondrous - entertaining us as well as expanding our vocabularies (or at least mine anyway).

Uncle Tom Cobley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The phrase Uncle Tom Cobley and all is used in British English as a humorous or whimsical way of saying et al., often to express exasperation at the large number of people in a list. The phrase comes from a Devon folk song "Widecombe Fair", collected by Sabine Baring-Gould. Its chorus ends with a long list of people: "For I want for to go to Widecombe Fair, With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all." The surname is spelt as "Cobleigh" in some references - or indeed cobbly!

One of life's lessons I have now fully adopted, after a struggle, is "good enough is good enough". If you continually struggle for perfection in everything, everything suffers. I think it was the French who coined the proverb "perfection is the enemy of good".
The other classic saying is "better to be imperfectly right than perfectly wrong".
So I agree, do the best you can with the resources, talents and time you have available but don't aim to be perfect in everything.

Yes, you obviously did something right during your presentation.

Perhaps you are in a position where you are received well because of your title. (I.e. CEO of a respected company in a certain line of business)

I was a little taken a-back that you would summarise your overall relief at the outcome of the presentation as "That will do".

Don't settle for second best would be my advice. In anything.
You know deep down it won't "do", but are afraid to fully admit it.

Like you, I don't claim to be expert in this area, an occasional speaker to peer group of professionals, but my limited reading on the subject of effective presentations suggests it has everything to do with excellent preparation.

E.g. the classic example: Using powerpoint, on each page/section of your talk, your audience sees a lemon shown in different ways, may be dissected in differing ways, coloured, topped, hairy? Adds a little humour, brings “theme” to a presentation and creates audience "anticipation" of the next slide.
When professionally done, this will illustrate the points you raise and bring novelty to the talk.

You can raise the bar so easily on your presentations with a little professional touch and fore-thought.

Best wishes.

I sympathise with your plight. I, too, have to perform occasionally and have been looking into ways to improve my delivery, which tends towards the Eddie Izzard school of informality.

My research took me off to TrainingZone, where I put together a bunch of tips ranging from obvious to straightforward and downright outlandish. The more useful ones have been compiled into an AccountingWEB article, PowerPoint presentation tips from the experts.

This post may be too late for your conference (I only caught up with your plight on Tuesday morning), but let us know how the talk went. And the next time something like this turns up, you'll be able to experiment a bit more confidently with PowerPoint.

John Stokdyk
Technology editor
AccountingWEB.co.uk

if the issue is related to a reduced level of work, do you think it would be possible to have a temporary reduction in hours (and salary) until work picks up?

1 hour less a day (assuming 40 hours=12.5%) - with a10% pay cut?

difficult with those that are front line and earn overtime - but should you be paying that at the moment?

it may also focus the employees minds on cost savings.

I suspect you have a two-fold problem. It's not just that people have time on their hands. It's also that, with the business standing still, they have lost their sense of forward momentum.

At the start of the economic crisis, fear was a motivator.
Now the economic situation has dragged on longer, people have become used to it and learned to live with it.

Training might help fill time but it won't be the complete answer. I know you intend it to benefit the business by improving skills, etc. But how you and your team communicate it is going to be important. It needs to be seen as building something and serving a bigger purpose; not just as a make-work scheme.

You need a communicated, believed, goal-orientated plan for what you want to achieve. Training should be only one element of this plan.

Perhaps you could link it to other activities which would be seen as building/empowering? How do you get the rank and file involved rather than just being passive recipients? How do you harness the imagination, energy and passion of your people, at all levels? What really bugs people that they would want to change? Or what value would they love to add that they don't yet?

Might it be worth seeing if the chair has any suggestions?

I am very confused!

Forgive me, but there are several elements to this post.

You seem to have something of a satisfaction issue. If you are feeling this way, you may not be the only one. Have you asked your management team how they feel?

You don't need to carry the entire burden of finding a new strategic vision. You built a strong team, so why not benefit from their energy and creativity? How about spending a couple of days offsite for a brainstorming session? Since the economy seems to have reached bottom now, maybe this is the right time to start thinking about where are you going on the way up?

Growth is good. But in this case, personal growth. You started as the CFO; became co-leader; became CEO; organized a buy-out; held the business safe during the crash. But, now that the business is in something of a steady state, you seem to be just running tasks. How are you developing at this precise moment? And, how is your team developing? Are you satisfied with their growth? Are they satisfied with their growth? If not, why not? And what are you going to do to develop them further? What happens if you get hit by a bus?

On a related issue... Absenteeism as a symptom of...

What kind of culture do you have in the company? How has it developed since you took over as CEO? How does it foster growth and development in you and the company's employees? Does it link to a vision? Does it deliver that vision? Does the culture create a stong sense of identity that keeps people pulling togther? Does it create opportunities for individual employees to make a difference? How do you want the culture to develop further? What kind of leadership are you giving on this on a day to day basis?

I'd guess from elements of previous posts that you have elements of a service culture. And I know some individuals have some ability to act. . But I'm not sure there is a fully fleshed out plan for how the culture will underpin strategy, performance, and innovation.