Make All of Your Employees CEOs

I read a great article in Saturday’s NY Times, Are You a CEO of Something?, with Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga, a provider of online social games.  Pincus shared some great leadership advice including the fact that he would rather have no “bad” performers than have several stars. He also talked about managing by “OKRs” – objectives and key results. Everyone in the company starts the week with three things they will accomplish (more details in the article), which helps people stay focused and not burn out.

My favorite piece of Pincus’ advice was that everyone in the company should be CEO of something.  “… if you give people really big jobs to the point that they’re scared, they have way more fun and they improve their game much faster.” I believe that if people aren’t being pushed and are working in a safe zone and are barely “moving the chains.”  Often CEOs are guilty of perpetuating this because they don’t encourage smart risk taking and also personally solve too many challenges faced by their employees. But if there is ownership and a culture of taking chances, you can really have a company that is rapidly growing.