CEOs! Thank me like crazy! For after years of insightful research, I’ve finally hit upon the top six mother-guaranteed strategies to score imperially high on your DQ (Donkey Quotient)! Presenting to you, a never before seen DQ checklist. Do you have it in you to win the world DQ crown? Give yourself one mark for each yes!
DQ Poser #1: Successful CEOs never believe in regularly firing people! Yes or no? If your answer is yes, my hero, you’ve gloriously earned your first Donkey Quotient point. A well quoted classic Forbes 2005 study confirms how “employee retrenchment actually increases loyalty!” BCG too confirms in a BusinessWeek article, “Few things demotivate an organisation (and its top performing employees) faster than tolerating and retaining low performers.” Jack Welch became Fortune’s “Manager of the Century” by firing the bottom 10% of his workforce every year! And his DQ is zero!
DQ Poser #2: A successful CEO is known to have jumped more jobs than wives! Yes/No? If you think that a CEO who has been in only one company all his life, must be a joker CEO not worth the toothpaste he uses, brother, you’ve just earned your 2nd DQ point! The Deloitte 2007 CEO Survey shows how a mind-numbing 81% CEOs of the top 100 US firms have never worked anywhere else (or maximum, have changed only one job) all their lives. Forbes quotes how a monumental 75% CEOs of leading non-US firms have spent 35 years or more with the same company they lead.
DQ Poser #3: Experienced people are forever more valuable than youth! Yes/No? Wrong without question my DQ aspirant! While the exemplary Spencer Stuart Route To The Top CEO Survey shows how the average age of CEOs is continuously falling, the most respected Roper Starch Inc.’s survey shows how an unbelievable 67% of American workforce now accepts that “the new century is all about youth.” Economist quotes how Bill Gates has ensured that the most important of Microsoft’s employees [programmers] are now in their 20s and early 30s.
DQ Poser #4: A CEO should never end up destroying or selling his company just to increase shareholder value! Yes/No? If you agree with the statement, you’ve just earned another glorious DQ point. CEOs who destroy their own company’s identity by selling it off or entering into an M&A deal when the offer was ripe and pristine, are now considered the world’s most effective and successful. Lucio A. Noto, CEO, Mobil, sold off his company to Exxon, and instantly added 15% to shareholder’s wealth. Reebok shareholders got a 34% premium when their CEO sold off the company to Adidas. Capellas of Compaq got his shareholders a super 35% (sold to HP). Guy Dolle, CEO Arcelor, is the best by getting an awesome 69% for his shareholders from Mittal Steel. On these terms, Jerry Yang of Yahoo fails miserably for having refused a 62% premium being offered by Microsoft in May 2008. Top CEOs destroy, devastate and demolish their own companies, if that can maximise shareholders’ wealth.
DQ Poser #5: Successful CEOs are never authoritative in their style of leadership! Yes/No? Absolutely wrong! Various separate researches of top institutions like HBS, University of Louisiana, Yale and many more support the authoritarian style of leadership without question. Steve Jobs, head of Fortune’s #1 Admired Global Corporation of 2008, Apple Inc., follows this to the tee. Andrew Keen writes in his best seller (The Cult Of The Amateur), “There’s not an ounce of democracy at Apple... Without Steve Jobs’ authoritarian leadership, Apple would be just another Silicon Valley outfit...”
DQ Poser #6: This is the easiest one... Excellent CEOs are never passionate about what they do! Yes/No? Well, duh... If you said yes to this, a donkey must be more passionate than you are! In a classy 2005 HBS paper, Dr. J. Byrnes (actually from MIT), identified “eight essential characteristics” of transformational leaders. The top one was “capacity for passion”. The existence of just one quality defines the world of a difference between being a titan of a performer, or simply being a historical also ran. And that’s passion!
Clearly, if you’ve scored zero (that is, all ‘No’) on my patented Donkey Quotient questionnaire, you’re in the company of the world’s greatest CEOs. And if you’ve achieved a perfect DQ score of 6, you qualify as the world’s first donkey that can read. Congratulations!!! It’s a privilege...
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