Fire your CEO

They’re not the boss of you

A year ago, a friend of mine took a senior leadership position at an NGO he’d admired for years. In his role, he oversees programmatic work for the NGO’s entire network of hospitals.

Last month, over rapidly cooling coffees in a café on a hospital ship in Madagascar, I asked him how it was going.

Now, I’ve known Christiaan (not his real name) for at least a decade—he’s a soft-spoken, gentle, diplomatic Dutch guy. So, I expected an equally diplomatic description of his new job in response.

I got something altogether different instead. His answer was firm, immediate, and direct:

“Honestly, Mark, I love it. The best part is that my CEO sets the vision clearly, gives me everything I need, and then trusts me to get it done.”

It’s been over a month since Christiaan and I had those cold coffees. Neither of us is in Madagascar anymore. But that line—he gives me everything I need, and then trusts me to get it done—that’s stuck with me.

For two reasons: first, it’s exceedingly rare in the NGO space (which, in the end, isn’t actually the subject of this post). And second, because it’s also exceedingly rare internally.

Before I get to what I mean, let me tell you about a CEO I recently worked under.

With this guy, every morning was a ritual in deflation. He specialized in sabotage by subversion. He would assign tasks without context, then withhold…