Promote Everybody to CEO of Something

I would like to thank Lissy Thornquist, of Holiday Inn London-Gatwick Airport, for this great idea – which she shared while feeding back on my book, The Happy Manifesto.

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I read an interview in the New York Times – the Corner Office with Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. His reply to the question, how has your leadership style evolved?, was:

“I’d turn people into CEOs. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, ‘By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re CEO of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.’

And that way, everyone knows who’s CEO of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.”
“

Lissy tells me she has had great results promoting her staff (most of whom are unskilled and largely on the minimum wage) to CEO of something, to give them clear responsibility. I’m going to try it at Happy. It’s a great idea.

Learn the 10 core principles to create a happy and productive workplace in Henry Stewart's book, The Happy Manifesto.

Support your aspiring and current managers to be empowering and confident leaders with Happy

Happy offers leadership programmes at Level 3, Level 5 and Level 7, from new managers/supervisor level all the way up to senior leadership teams and CEOs. These programmes are based on the ideas of trusting your people. They are practical and based on applying what yo’ve learnt. We aim to inspire and ignite change in your organisation, as well as giving you valuable management skills such as business strategy, decision-making, negotiation and project management.

We also offer programmes tailored specifically to people from Global Majority backgrounds. The content is the same, but have been designed to give new and experienced managers the skills they need to navigate organisational culture with a clearer perspective on their own potential, as well as building their confidence and expanding their professional strengths.

Henry Stewart

Henry is founder and Chief Happiness Officer of Happy Ltd, originally set up as Happy Computers in 1987. Inspired by Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick, he has built a company which has won multiple awards for some of the best customer service in the country and being one of the UK’s best places to work.

Henry was listed in the Guru Radar of the Thinkers 50 list of the most influential management thinkers in the world. “He is one of the thinkers who we believe will shape the future of business,” explained list compiler Stuart Crainer.

His first book, Relax, was published in 2009. His second book, the Happy Manifesto, was published in 2013 and was short-listed for Business Book of the Year.

You can find Henry on LinkedIn and follow @happyhenry on Twitter.