Does celebrating celebrity CEOs set retail on a perilous path?
The recent media focus on the relatively young age of Burger King's CEO Daniel Schwartz, in light of Burger King's Tim Hortons acquisition, has me thinking of our growing tendency to glorify young success, and equate it, sometimes erroneously, with genius. The social media boom, with its larger-than-life figures and spectacle IPOs, has made us think of CEOs—often young—as celebrities.
If a recent CNNMoney article celebrating Burger King's under-35 c-suite is any indication, the fast food industry as well as others could be in danger of yielding to the appeal of the upstart celebrity CEO. If this is the case, caution is important. When we treat CEOs like celebrities, we run the risk of forgetting that their performance should be judged on more than the ability to peddle hype from quarter to quarter.
The myths we often see about upstart CEOs tend to be stories of lightning strikes, successes that hinge on innovation, but also on being in the absolute right place at the right time. When we believe that every CEO with a cavalier attitude and a gimmick has his or her thumb on the pulse, we end up getting easily sold when we should know better.
For every Facebook or Twitter, there are thousands of social media endeavors that have choked anywhere along the line. Look no further than Forbes.com's "America's Most Powerful CEOs 40 And Under" list (on which Schwartz appears). This year's list specifically notes the absence of ousted Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. His tenure at Groupon, which found investors following him like he was a half-mad wizard with a dowsing rod, imagining every new post-IPO stunt held the cryptic promise of profits, is a surefire cautionary tale against CEO worship.
So, if we find ourselves watching any company with a young or irreverent CEO pursue a strategy that seems geared towards short-term gains or at odds with what a responsible executive should do, we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that what we are seeing is some work of inspired brilliance. Sometimes what we're looking at is exactly what is there.
Old-fogey concepts like wisdom, thoughtfulness, self-awareness and self-criticism are the important parts of leadership, whether the leader is a suit-clad square, a hot young finance guru or a rogue coder with head-to-toe tattoos. While I don't expect an "America's Fairest 40 CEOs" article to appear any time soon, appreciating those virtues could save us from buying into some bad ideas. To invoke an era of leadership that predates even Zuckerberg—there were a lot of wild parties under the reign of Caligula, but Marcus Aurelius was probably the Roman emperor you'd want to live under.