Monday, May 18, 2009

The portraits of former CEOs

When I was walking into the lobby of our main headquarter building in my previous company, there was an area where portraits of former CEOs were on the wall. We had every CEO or chairman’s picture back to when company was founded. The company’s focus was very executives heavy.
In the heart of change by John P. Kotter there is a story where the new executive team decided to remove all the pictures of old CEOs and replaced them with the pictures of their customer’s stores. Soon after the new pictures were up, several leaders mentioned that it is about time to focus on the customers and thereafter this become the talk of the company. It seems that little change made a big difference in their attitude toward customer service.
Perhaps next time you see your CEOs portraits – you can suggest a different type of art.