I personally think a CEO’s main role is to be the best salesman/woman for his/her company. And I am not just talking about literal sales – I am talking about being the face/image/best representation for the company. No matter how big or how small the company, people attribute qualities of the company based on how the company is humanised. The humanising of the company is where the vision of the CEO and the values they stand for aligns with the people who work for, and with, the company and this gets tangible enough to be felt by the consumers and the public at large. Advertising can only do so much, it is merely a door opener – the actual product and service has to not only be good, but perceived as relatable.
As I sit here and write this, I look out of my window on the 24th floor of Oval Damansara in Kuala Lumpur and am struck by the golden sunlight streaming through cottony white clouds spread out like a fuzzy blanket against the blue grey skies of a otherwise wet KL. It has been raining like forever the last few weeks, which has played havoc with my cough. I strongly believe I am allergic to rainy season. Though everyone scoffs at my Puteri Garam persona, I have noticed this trend since I was a kid. I get wet in the drizzle and it triggers me – I either get the flu or I start coughing like ‘the old man in that book by Nabakov’ as The Police used to sing in their song Don’t stand So Close To Me.
Back to the CEO. Your CEO has to be the Queen in a game of chess. You don’t take out your Queen too early in the game, or you risk losing her. You send out the frontliners – the pawns, but you don’t send them out haphazardly – you have a strategy, you open them out with one focus only – to allow your main characters control over the board. Your main characters then need to dominate the board and win. In a corporate game, this is where your combination of product, services, teamwork and sustaining power come into play. Just like you cannot win the game of chess with only the Queen, you cannot win at business with just the CEO. You need strategy but through it all you know who commands the most star power – the Queen. And that is because she has the most clout.
And that’s how your CEO should be in your company. Humanising it through his/her clout. The person people turn to to get statements. The person who sells why this company is the best in its field. The person whose sheer charisma and dynamism empowers faith in the company and trust that the rest of the employees embody that same philosophy.
I look out of the window again and realise that it did not rain today and I am so very thankful. I am hoping that the rainy season has gone and that the sun will start playing a bigger role because I need this cough that drains my energy to go away. From my vantage point on the 24th floor and the full glass walls of the office, I can see the traffic beginning to pile up. It is only 4.45 pm on a Monday and already the roads are filled with almost standstill crawling traffic. I wonder if the never-ending pollution from cars and factories in this valley are what gets absorbed into the rain, which creates a reaction from our bodies to it. Then I remember reading that there are pollen from trees that get dissolved into the rainwater, and also additional mold and mildew in the atmosphere that contributes to the allergic reactions during rainy season.
Every company goes through its sunshiny days and its rainy weather too. You get aggravating hiccups & coughs that never seem to end during the ‘rainy’ season while on sunny days everything seems to just sail on by. And just like a cough, you doctor the problems and give them time to heal. You pull your team together and ensure that everyone plays a beautifully coordinated and strategic game of chess.
If the Queen is the CEO, then the organisation is The King. At all time, every piece is working to ensure the safety and longevity of the King/company. The Queen comes in with her power & might to lend added strength to an already ongoing battle that her knights, rooks and bishops have engaged in. But the battle can be won even if the Queen is taken out, which is an important message we all need to know – be this in corporate culture or even in politics.
