Secrets of the CEOs
Andrew Mason | Groupon
The fantasist. Andrew Mason may be CEO of the world’s fastest-growing company – currently valued at £13bn – but that doesn’t mean the 31 year old co-founder of deal-of-the-day website Groupon has gone corporate. “As we get bigger, instead of conforming we want to become weirder,” says Mason. He stages “events” at the Chicago HQ (a man “lives” in the building, regularly causing mischief) spreads far-fetched rumours (once claiming he owns 20 cats) and even hired a male performance artist to roam the office in a tutu.
Jack Welsh | GE
The axe man. No messing with Jack Welch – the legendary boss of General Electric kept to a simple formula. At least ten per cent of people are rubbish, the theory went – so every year, Welch fired the bottom performing ten per cent of his managers and hired people to replace them. The result was a workforce on the verge of nervous breakdown.
Ray Dalio | Bridgewater Associates
The Messiah. The world’s largest hedge fund is also the “strangest” according to a recent New Yorker profile. Described as a cult by former employees. CIO Ray Dalio demands “radical transparency”; staff are expected to vigorously challenge their bosses’ views and are forced to talk about their faults in minute detail, while promotions are discussed with the candidates still in the room. The 62-year-old has even collected his ideas in a book, Principles, which is required reading by all employees.
Michael Bloomberg | Bloomberg/New York Mayor
The clock watcher. For financial media mogul and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, time isn’t just money – it’s an overdraft. To ensure City Hall meetings never last longer than they need to Bloomberg installed count-up clocks in all the meeting rooms, while participants nervously watch as the minutes rack up. The clocks other function? The wages of all the meeting members can be entered showing not the time being used up by the meeting, but the money.
James Dyson | Dyson
The doer. While most large tech companies are paranoid about their top-secret new products getting into the wrong hands, one-man inventing sweatshop James Dyson takes the opposite view: his entire design floor is open-plan, so everyone can see what the R&D guys are up to. The logic is that others may have an idea of how a product might work. And the “everyone-muck-in” philosophy doesn’t stop there. On their first day, every new recruit – from senior exec to office drone – is given a Dyson vacuum cleaner in pieces and asked to assemble it there and then.
Steve Jobs | Apple
The list-maker. There’s nothing too strange about the late Steve Jobs’ penchant for gathering his top 100 people at Apple – a mix of VPs and key individuals – for an annual three-day strategy session to map out the company’s future. Except the make-up of that 100 changed every year and was shrouded in secrecy – participants were under strict instructions not to mention it to colleagues or book it in their calendars. Suffice it say, however, if one day you noticed half your friends weren’t at the office, you were not in the top 100.
Lloyd Blankfein | Goldman Sachs
The retro-techie. You’d think the CEO of the noted investment bank would be glued to the mobile technology, but you’d be wrong. Former Blackberry addict Blankfein prefers to listen to voice-mail, checking the days profit and loss statements via a voice mail dispatch. The rest of Goldmans followed suit, with executives joking they “do voice-mail”. All of which, of course, has nothing to do with the e-mail evidence that’s become so useful to investigating regulators. Oh No.
Larry Page | Google
The free spirit. With its co-founder now installed as CEO after the more experienced Eric Schmidt guided Google through its early years, expect the tech giant to get stranger with Larry Page at the helm. A noted hater of bureaucracy – once sacking all of his middle managers, before swiftly being forced to re-hire them – Page avoids meetings by not having an assistant (“Most people aren’t to ask me for[a meeting],” he rationalises.”[but] they’re happy to ask an assistant”). Anyone who wants to talk to him must learn his routine, then stalk him through the corridors for a walk-and-talk, keeping their pitch sharp and legs limber.