L. Bart Adams

I have read and heard many definitions of CEO disease. Wikipedia defines it as “CEO disease,” which refers to the information vacuum around a leader; that arises when employees withhold relevant (or unpleasant) information.

In my experience, diagnosing CEO disease in the company is evident by one or more the following symptoms:

1. The CEO is the last person in the business to receive the bad news
2. The CEO does not get all of the information needed to make crucial decisions
3. Subordinates believe they are protecting the CEO by withholding some or all the necessary information

I recently discovered that I was suffering from CEO disease at my business. It’s been almost four years since I have been in this role, and only now am I uncovering the symptoms. I cannot say how long it’s been happening because, like sign number 1, the CEO is the last to know. The most recent incident had to do with several interpersonal conflicts among my office staff. When I got the bad news, I was blindsided by what was going on and surprised that they hadn’t brought the issue to my attention sooner, so I could help resolve it before it came to a head.

In light of my new understanding and study of this disease, I am currently using the following prescription to help fight this disease at our facility.

1. Don’t kill the messenger. How the CEO responds to terrible news makes an impression on the person delivering the message and can have a lasting impact on the CEO promptly receiving any bad news in the future.
2. Build trust with subordinates through weekly/monthly one-on-one meetings. Direct reports will be more apt to share valuable information if they trust you. Increasing the frequency of one-on-one sessions can help build this confidence and give the subordinate a forum to share helpful information with you.
3. Ask good questions. If the CEO is not getting all of the information, they are most likely not asking thoughtful questions. It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that clarity exists in all communication with direct reports.  Asking the right questions is a way to deepen understanding and gain clarity.

I am making a special effort to apply this prescription and hope to rid myself of this fallible yet curable disease. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Recently, I attended a meeting where I enjoyed a 4-hour presentation about health and wellness from presenter Dan Miller. He said that stress is the number one reason people fail at achieving optimum health. He also taught that stress is self-imposed. It’s something we do to ourselves. It is a choice. He defined stress as “our reaction to outside stimuli.”

He gave several tips on how to reduce stress in our lives. The most interesting and, so far, most helpful for me has been asking a simple question. When you feel like reacting to some outside stimulus, ask yourself the following question, “Will it kill me?” Pretty simple, right?! Since attending this workshop, I have used this technique many times, and it has helped me tremendously. My family can attest to its effectiveness, as well. I used to get angry and stressed about things like:

• A child’s dirty or unorganized room
• A misplaced toy or clothing in the middle of the living room floor
• Receiving the wrong food on my order at a drive-through restaurant
• Getting the bad news about a piece of broken equipment at the mushroom farm

These are some things that used to send me into an emotional tailspin. Of course, it wasn’t just one isolated incident that would affect me; it was a day full of these events accumulating until I would lose my temper. Resolving each of these issues can all be taken care of more quickly with a calmer head.

This simple technique has worked well for me because 99% of things that happen to or around me will not kill me, and that is excellent news!

My Responsibility

When I first took over the farm, one of the first responsibilities I assumed from my father was paying the bills. This process was something he had been doing for years. He had absorbed the Controller responsibilities when his prior employer had a difficult time finding a qualified candidate. So, he became the General Manager and Controller. I knew when I took over, one of my first hires would be a Controller, and one of the first delegations would be turning over the bill paying. Still, I was reluctant to turn over this responsibility and hesitated for several months after hiring our Controller.

It turns out I derive no energy from this activity. It took a long time to learn how to do this task, and it did not come naturally. In the meantime, I hired a Controller and turned over the majority of the accounting responsibilities, except, of course, paying the bills. I continued to perform this activity as it helped me understand our cash position and monitor our spending weekly. It took me almost one and half years to delegate this responsibility to the Controller. She was excited to have this added responsibility, and it fell in her core competencies. She enjoyed this role, where it was a significant source of stress for me.

How to Remove Bottlenecks

As the owner, I became a bottleneck in our administrative processes by not delegating the bill-paying role. I had so many other things pulling for my attention that spending a lot of time on a necessary task that I did not enjoy decreased our interoffice efficiency. The only way to remove this inefficiency or bottleneck is to delegate. The freedom I felt when trusting this role to the Controller gave me a boost of energy that I could channel in other business areas.

After I had appointed this process, I was left asking myself, "Why did I wait so long?" As I've contemplated this question, I keep coming back to trust. It was hard for me to let this go because I didn't trust that the Controller could do the job as well as I was. This idea was an absurd notion because I wasn't doing the job very well. Steven M. R. Covey said, "Trust is confidence born of two dimensions: character and competence." I certainly didn't question the character of the Controller. I trusted her to complete many other tasks that required high levels of honesty and integrity in dealing with employees' private and sensitive information. I knew she was competent because she completed other accounting responsibilities. So, I didn't question her competence. The bottom line is I had no precedent for not trusting her with this responsibility.

Passing It On

This experience taught me a lot about delegation. As I've matured as a leader, I have improved dramatically with how I delegate roles and responsibilities to all team members. In an ironic twist, the Controller mentioned previously has recently struggled with transferring some of her more time-consuming lower value tasks. I have asked her to train our receptionist on basic data entry and reporting to help increase her time for more high-value activities. Both she and the receptionist have shared the same feelings about this transition. The Controller has said things like, "I don't trust that she'll [the receptionist] will do it right and I'll have to go back and redo it." The receptionist has said, "She (the Controller) doesn't trust me enough to train me." It's my turn to teach this principle to the Controller while refraining from saying, "delegate already!"

A couple of months ago, one of our truck drivers, who makes deliveries to our customers, had a rough weekend and went AWOL. It started on Saturday morning when the driver called our assistant packing supervisor to tell him he had run into a parked van at one of his stops in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also said, “I quit!” The supervisor told him to bring the truck back to the farm, and we could talk about it when he got back, to which the driver agreed.

The supervisor called me after he got off the phone with the driver and told me about the situation. A short time later, I received a call from the owner of the damaged van to begin working on the insurance claim for repairs and a replacement vehicle until the vehicle was ready.

Fast forward to Sunday evening, about 10 pm, the packing supervisor called me and said the driver had not returned to the farm and he could not get a hold of him on his cell phone. He was at the County Sheriff’s office filing a missing person report. About an hour later, a deputy called me to get more information about the driver and the truck. I was anxious about him and wondered if I should travel to Salt Lake City to start looking for him that evening. The deputy said he would issue a statewide alert for the driver and hold off until the morning before deciding about going to look for him.

After a restless night, I went to the farm for our team huddle and discussed the issue with my team. After the huddle, I found the emergency contact phone numbers for the driver and made a call. The first number I called was for his mother, who was living in Idaho. She was crying when I called and said her son had just called her and told her he was “leaving the truck at the Salvation Army in Ogden, Utah.” He didn’t tell her where he was going or what happened, which upset her.

At this point, we knew the truck was in Ogden, and we needed to get it back to Fillmore. So, the packing supervisor and I hopped in my vehicle with the mission of retrieving the equipment. (The supervisor has a CDL, so he plans to drive the tractor and trailer back to the farm.)  In the meantime, I received a call from our sales manager who called our customers all morning to see if they had seen our driver.  One of our clients, located in Odgen, responded that the driver had been there that morning to make a delivery, but he didn’t have any mushrooms and was not scheduled to make a delivery.

We later found out that our driver who was expected to make the delivery to that customer saw the missing driver at this client’s dock, and he had blood on his face and was acting “crazy.”

“He was acting so crazy that I didn’t get out of my truck to talk to him and left as soon as I could,” said the other driver.

The deputy who had interviewed me the night prior called me to report that they had not found the driver but that the cell phone he had been using was reported stolen to the Salt Lake City Police. I gave him the new information and told him we were on our way to retrieve the tractor and trailer.

At this point, we located the truck, the driver’s cell phone had been reported stolen, and that the driver’s behavior was erratic, and he appeared to be disoriented.  We also think he is still in the Ogden area.

We thought that’s what we knew. Shortly after that, the packing supervisor called the missing driver, who told him that he was moving the truck from the Salvation Army to the Flying J gas station on 21st Street and I-15 in Ogden. I then called the Weber County Police Department to report the incident and asked them to secure the truck until I got there. They called back 30 minutes later and said they could not find the truck and trailer at the gas station. I asked them to check the Salvation Army. They found the equipment at the Salvation Army, and they secured the vehicle until our arrival. Only now are we sure we have located the truck.

We make our way to the Salvation Army in Ogden, and as we pull up to the truck, I see the missing driver sitting in the truck?!  I thought they had secured the vehicle? I pulled into a parking lot across the street and got out of the vehicle. He sees the packing supervisor and me and gets out of the truck to visit with us. As he approaches, we are standing in the parking lot, and he has a black leather jacket on with something under the jacket, which makes it stick out awkwardly.

I asked, “Are you okay? We’ve been trying to contact you for two days? What happened?”

He was agitated and pacing back-and-forth and from side-to-side about 3 or 4 paces, and he would not look at either of us. He said, “Sorry about this Dave, I know I screwed up here, but when this all settles down, I need to talk to you at the farm about this job.” My name is not Dave, and he was agitated. At this point, I felt like he was on drugs. I was concerned.

He went on to tell the story of his weekend. He describes how after he hit the parked van and called the supervisor to quit, he went to one of his friends in Salt Lake, as he put it, “to get a lady friend to watch him sleep.” Well, he got two ladies-of-the-night to join him that night at a hotel in downtown Salt Lake. He assured me he just wanted them to watch him sleep. But while he was asleep, they stole his cash, cell phone, and his last paycheck. The following day he took the truck to Ogden. He said he “needed to find a gun so he could take care of some stuff.” At his point, I immediately said, “Do you have a gun on you?” He avoided the question and went on. I repeated more firmly, “Do you have a gun?” He said, “no, I’m just talking smack.” (In his more colorful language.)

He went on to describe how he met “Pastor Dan,” who was helping him out. He pointed behind the trailer, and there was a man in a hoodie sitting in a car, watching our conversation. He was in the getaway car. I asked, “What church does “Pastor Dan” preach from?” He replied,”the Salvation Army church,” as he pointed to the building behind us.

At this point, I told him I needed to call the cops to bring us the key so we could take the truck back to the farm, and they needed to ask him some questions because of the missing person report we had filed.  He argued with me for a minute about how he could see the cops, and then he turned and ran to the getaway car with “Pastor Dan” and drove off. The packing supervisor wrote down the license plate as I called the Weber County Police to report the vehicle information and details about the incident.

We then retrieved the key to the tractor, and the supervisor drove it home. As we inspected the tractor before the supervisor began the trip, we found the CB Radio was missing. I can only assume that is what the driver had under his jacket. Also, you may be asking, why was the driver sitting in the truck when we pulled up? The cops took the keys out when securing the vehicle, locked the doors, and left the windows down 4-5 inches. So, he was able to reach in and open the door.

Learning Experience

What did I learn from this experience? He mentioned when we saw him at the truck that he needed to talk to me about the job. I can infer from this comment that he was having some issues with his job. It’s clear to me he was having personal problems, as well, with the tale of sex, drugs, and guns over the wild weekend. What I gleaned from this is that my communication with this employee was not open enough to talk to me about the issues he was facing, both personally and professionally. I wish he would have told me before he went AWOL.  You never know how you can influence someone with a thoughtful word or conversation.

The driver mentioned that he had been off-the-grid for seven years, meaning he had spent time in prison. He said, “for the past three years, I’ve had to bust my @$$ to stay out of prison.” My response was, “Why is that so hard? Just make good choices.” I don’t completely understand his background, and I wasn’t trying to pass judgment. But I do know this, who we are in this is a direct result of our choices. This experience reinforced this idea in my mind.

The Curse of Knowledge is a communication problem when someone has vast experience and knowledge on a particular subject. They unknowingly assume everyone around them understands what they are referencing.  They expect people to read their minds because the subject matter and ideas are so obvious to them.

This curse is most evident in the workplace with new hires. It is easy for their immediate supervisors (often with years of experience) to overlook “simple” concepts during the training process.

Years ago, while conducting an orientation with a new front-line employee in our conference room, I offered the employee a cup of coffee, to which he obliged. The next day during his morning break, he came to the meeting room and got a cup of coffee, and sat down at the conference table with the entire management team. This room is where the management team met each morning for their morning break to discuss any issues related to the farm. After a short awkward silence and some confused glances from the managers, I had to politely escort him out of the room and direct him to the relevant break area. It was my fault. The “Curse of Knowledge” had set in, as I had assumed he would find the break room. Up to this point, it was not part of our orientation to show new hires the break area. I promptly added this to our orientation procedure.

How do you break the curse?

In a boiling cauldron, add two frog eyes, a tongue of a newt, and wild boar urine. In the previous example, there was confusion on such a simple issue. Imagine the most severe consequences that could occur if you cannot break the curse—for instance, overlooking a critical safety measure that could lead to an injury. Here are a few ideas that I have used or encouraged with my team to help with breaking the curse.

1. Over-communication – You can never get into trouble with over-communicating. There is a paradox to over-communicating; because you are so familiar with the subject, it feels like you are over-communicating, while the recipient is simply getting “new” information.
2. Checklists – Using a list is a great way to make sure you train on all relevant topics and that no stone gets left unturned. I recently read an excellent book about this concept, The Checklist Manifesto. I highly recommend reading this for more ideas.
3. Repetition – Repeat training programs at least annually or more frequently, depending on the nature of the work. For example, during a monthly safety meeting to review significant safety concerns, it may be a good time to refresh your employees on an HR policy. This process helps increase understanding and clarifies policies and procedures with staff.

Each of these ideas is a tool for more efficient communication.  A corollary that applies to each of these tools is to answer the “why” for those you are communicating with, even if they don’t ask.  Answering the “why” gives clarity and purpose to the knowledge you’re trying to convey. As a leader, I’ve learned that I must consistently and continuously improve my communication skills, but I assumed you already knew that?!