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Carly on CEOs, Presidents, and Performance Profiles

By Lou Adler, September 24, 2008

On September 16, 2008 Carly Fiorina made the statement that none of the presidential or vice-presidential candidates had the experience to be the CEO of a major corporation. Somehow she, or the media, emphasized the McCain/Palin half of the foursome. As a result, she's now in some hot water, and has been off-camera for awhile.

However, her point raises an important question: "Are the skills and abilities to run an international, multi-unit corporation comparable to those needed to run the U.S. government?" The answer to this becomes quite clear once you prepare a performance profile for each job. You can then decide for yourself. More importantly, you'll discover that using a performance profile is a far better way of taking a search assignment than relying on a traditional job description. It will also open up the pool to more diverse candidates and more high potential candidates with comparable performance track records, even if they don't exactly match the skills and experience requirements.

For background, a performance profile is not a job description listing skills, abilities, and experience requirements. Instead, it describes the performance expectations for the job, describing what the person must do to be successful. It's filled with action verbs like build, create, develop, initiate, solve, design, etc.; not passive verbs and statements like "have" and "be responsible for." For example, a performance profile for a sales rep selling plumbing products in Peoria might state, "Achieve and sustain the monthly quota 90 days after successfully completing the sales training program." The job description for this same job would have something like, "Must have 3-5 years b-to-b plumbing parts industry experience."

It takes about an hour or so discussion with a hiring manager to ferret out the key performance objectives for most jobs. Following are a few of the key questions you need to ask the hiring manager when initially taking a search assignment for a management or executive position:

1. What are some of the big challenges the person taking this job is likely to face?
2. What are some of the key short- and long-term projects the person will be working on?
3. What will success look like after 6 months?  What about 12 months?
4. Describe the team and some of the challenges the person might face in dealing with the team or rebuilding it.
5. What must the person do to rebuild the organization for the long term?
6. What are some of the critical problems the person will face right away that need to be resolved?
7. Are there any process issues that need to be improved or redesigned?
8. Are there any long-term strategic issues that need to be addressed?
9. Describe the culture and environment of the organization. Does this need to be changed or modified in some way to put the organization on a long-term path to success?

The idea here is to develop a list of 6-8 performance objectives put in some type of priority order that describe on-the-job success. Candidates are then interviewed and assessed against this benchmark by asking them to describe a series of comparable accomplishments.

With this in mind, here's a pretty high-level view of a performance profile for a CEO for a large multi-national firm:

1. Evaluate the current operating plans for all units and ensure they're on track and that the reporting systems are in place to ensure real-time visibility into business performance.
2. Establish programs to determine if the executive teams at all units including corporate and group headquarters are fully able to handle the company's current business opportunities and overall growth plans.
3. Ensure that the overall strategic path of each group/division is appropriate and established.
4. Identify critical weaknesses in every unit that could affect short- and long-term operating performance and implement immediate corrective actions.
5. Fully understand the company's financial strengths and weaknesses and lead the establishment of programs and controls to meet government, legal, and investor needs.
6. Lead the negotiation of big buy/sell global mega-deals that affect company strategy and direction.
7. Lead the integration of disparate business units to achieve economies of scale.
8. Deal with the conflict between the need to balance short-term financial performance with long-term growth.

There are probably a lot more than these, but you get an idea from this of the complexity involved in being the CEO of a large publicly-traded company operating on an international scale. (Note: these objectives would need to include specific metrics and time frames in order to be complete.) From my perspective it's pretty clear that nobody in the current crop of presidential candidates is qualified to be CEOs, the jobs being fundamentally different. In my opinion, Carly was 100% right on this point, and should not have been chastised for it. The media clearly doesn't understand these differences in roles, either, since they're the ones who misunderstood both the comments and the underlying issues.

A U.S. President isn't directly involved in understanding markets, products, distribution, manufacturing, accounting, IT, performance reporting, and running a business for profit. The President might be tangentially involved in the budgeting, financing, trade, organizational management, tax, compliance, and some of the diplomatic issues involved in operating on a world stage, but it's a stretch to think they're the same.

One could argue that there are some other overlaps, but it seems to me the differences between a corporate CEO and the U.S. President are far greater than the similarities. Of course, a person qualified to be a corporate CEO wouldn't necessarily be qualified to be the President, either. While the intellectual, organizational, and the complexities of the problems faced are comparable, how decisions are made and executed are fundamentally different. This is clearer when the CEO's performance objectives are compared to those for the President.

A performance profile for the current President of the U.S. would probably include these critical performance objectives:

1. Lead a bi-partisan effort to assess all of the current risks facing the country and put plans and contingency plans in motion to address them.
2. Lead the country out of the huge current financial mess we're in now and bring back some level of economic stability within 12-18 months.
3. Articulate a vision that moves beyond campaign rhetoric that actually includes detailed and meaningful plans that have a chance of working. These need to cover every aspect of domestic and international affairs.
4. Somehow come up with a workable healthcare plan that can get passed by Congress within the first term.
5. Get legislation passed that addresses the illegal immigration issues we're facing including closing the borders and providing some type of path to citizenship.
6. Develop a bi-partisan approach to resolving the current big issues facing the country while eliminating the big Congressional bottlenecks.
7. Successfully resolve the Iraq situation on a bi-partisan basis.
8. Put the country on a path to energy independence.
9. Put a long-term plan in motion to balance the federal budget including the elimination of earmarks, loopholes, subsidies, and pork. As part of this lead an overhaul of the tax code and put Social Security on a sound footing.
10. Develop an international approach to counter Russia's increasingly belligerent approach as it re-establishes itself as a world power.
11. Effectively deal with the growing terrorist threat and instability caused by nations like Iran.
12. Lead a successful transition in six weeks from the current to the new government without putting the country at risk.
13. Just about instantly establish a cabinet and build the organization to handle the day-to-day affairs of government and address everything that's bad that's likely to happen.

And the list goes on to include the handling of unexpected crises, dealing with day-to-day domestic affairs, managing large agencies, addressing partisan social issues, selecting judges, and working with Congress on important legislation, among others.

Given the current serious condition of the economy, international pressures, military challenges, terrorism, and energy issues of all forms, these all need to be at the top of the list and addressed concurrently. From this one could conclude that the President of the U.S. is a much more challenging 24/7 job than a corporate CEO. Add into this the increased visibility, pressure, risk, and world-wide impact and importance.

Given our choices though, you have to wonder if the current Presidential contenders are up for the job, including those who are just a few heartbeats away. Assuming all have passed the intellectual threshold required to lead this nation, is McCain's "fire-aim, fire-aim, ready" style a better fit in our tumultuous times than Obama's "ready-ready-ready-ready" approach. If you can get McCain to find the real target before shooting, you just might be able to get by. On the other hand, if you can get Obama to at least pull the trigger now and then, you could also see some positive results. What I'm not sure about is which is harder, aiming or firing.  

Despite all of this, the idea of putting a performance profile together before interviewing candidates is one sure way to take some of the risk and error out of the hiring process. This is true whether you're hiring a U.S. President, corporate CEO, or entry-level accountant.