A book cometh before a CEO's fall: Column
Top executives at large companies have some of the most demanding jobs in the world. They work constantly, stress is an occupational hazard, and the quest to stay on top in a competitive global economy is all-consuming.
Then there are the book tours, cable news appearances to pontificate on Fed policy and diversity in the workplace, TED talks, Twitter campaigns to ban the word bossy and fashion spreads in Vogue.
The last era of the CEO as Cultural Icon ended with the collapse of the Internet bubble and the implosion of Enron, the company Fortune had named "most innovative" every year from 1995 through 2000. For a few years after that, the age of the imperial CEO was over. Most of the leading business magazines stopped with the tight portrait photos of menacing CEOs, who displayed every pore for close-up public admiration.
But now, a resurgent stock market and high-flying social media start-ups have once again made top executives household names and cross-cultural stars. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In was the #2 Bestselling book on Amazon.com last year, and Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com scored a huge hit with 2012's Delivering Happiness. CEOs have made their return as thought leaders: Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey has a book on "conscious capitalism" out, and the CEO of Yum! Brands, a company that might not ordinarily be exciting enough to capture the public's attention, had a number one NYT bestseller with Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen.
In the past, such publishing triumphs have seldom ended well for shareholders. Bill Gates' book Business @ The Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy came out March 24th, 1999; in the fifteen years since, shares of Microsoft have remained basically flat. Michael Dell's Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry was published on February 17th, 1999. Over the next 15 years, the industry revolutionized again, but this time Dell didn't keep up: A few years ago, one professor wrote that he would no longer be teaching the Harvard Business School case study on Dell's late 1990s successes because "Dell has failed so miserably to adapt to the times that it no longer represents a good example of how to create value for customers and capture it for shareholders."
Should a CEO's decision to move out of the boardroom and into the world of the public discourse make shareholders nervous?
A couple examples of "CEO as Self-Help Expert" becoming "Former CEO as Disgrace to His Family," taken from my new book Good Advice from Bad People, a collection of inspirational wisdom from spectacular failures: On May 12th, 2006, one CEO went to his alma mater, the University of Colorado, to deliver a commencement address that included this: "When you know what you are talking about, others will follow you because it's safe to follow you." Less than two and a half years later, that same man, Richard Fuld, led Lehman Brothers into the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. In his 1996 bestseller Mean Business, Al Dunlap explained that "The only limitations in your career are self-imposed." A few years later, the SEC imposed on Dunlap a lifetime ban from serving as an officer or director of a public company.
These examples are, of course, just anecdotes. But there's strong evidence that displays of a willingness to focus on things other than managing a core business mark the peak of an executive's career — and, perhaps, a good time for investors to pull out. A 2007 New York University study found that stock market returns tend to decline after a CEO builds his trophy home — and other research suggests a similar drop in performance after companies build lavish new headquarters. It doesn't seem like a stretch to suggest that a CEO stepping out to build a platform as a self-help author/speaker might correlate with the same sorts of outcomes.
So here's a tip for CEOs who are also aspiring self-help experts: You're responsible for the careers of thousands of employees and the retirement security of millions of investors. That's enough work for now, and you probably won't be CEO forever. And when you're no longer CEO, you'll miss all that energy, sense of purpose, and, yes, attention. That will be the perfect time to write a book and go on a speaking tour.
Zac Bissonnette is the author of Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong.
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