I think his problem of persona mis-matches is a temporary problem we all will face. Are you a leader of your organization or are you a burning man guy? We all have limited time to understand your true personality, so we have to rely on our best generalizations and stereotypes.
However, not too long from now we will all either be a) so exposed that our simple notions of persona will break down. We can just be people and we can be judged in context instead of these pseudo-personas, or b) we will all be so scared about breaking our personas that we will just withdraw from expressing ourselves honestly.
In the meantime, yea its a broken system. If you want to express the persona of a successful business person, it might just mean you don't get to express yourself as burning man dude until you retire or something. Its a sacrifice because the rest of the world just is not ready to see you as both.
There are successful companies out there that don't adhere to the typical structure, and I'm glad to add another company to that list. For example, the 20,000 employees at Gore-Tex have no bosses, you're on a team.
Also, Tony Hsieh sits in a cubicle among employees -- he's just one of the guys, even though he's the founder & CEO of a giant company recently purchased by Amazon. His cubicle office isn't near any windows either. He's also very approachable in the office, just as any other employee would be.
Awesome article. To nit pick though, it states that there are 6,300 employees at Gore. Still, no bosses for that many people is an incredible accomplishment.
Well, the article was written in 2007, so maybe there are more now, but then again in 2007 the economy looked strong. So maybe there's less than 6300 now.
I think it seems a problem with the history of his persona too. Originally set up by a PR guy, it's vastly shifted - towards the 'real' him, yeah, but shifted nonetheless. If he'd been shirtless Burning-Man guy from the start, I don't think there would be quite so much uproar.
Funny, I didn't expect to hear reasonably priced after he mentioned that a concern with social media and his employees is that they don't take pics of M. Fox and other celebrities that stay there.
Not that if it wasn't reasonably priced I wouldn't have given it a shot, but he definitely sent a clear message about his clientele with that line, lol.
I'm pretty sure Steve doesn't think of himself as superhuman; that's just how everyone else views him. His commencement address at Stanford seemed quite human to me.
Social media jumbles all our social circles together, where we used to keep them separate by physical location. Every application seems to assume I have one list of friends. In reality, I have friends among gaming contacts, friends among political junkies, friends from work, friends from the internet, friends from college, friends from church, friends from my old apartment building. They may have nothing in common with each other, and indeed may indeed be offended by mutually exclusive behaviors on my part. Interacting with all of them at once is awkward at best.
Perhaps an ability to organize and tag friends (and posts) by circle would help.
I've been thinking a lot about how tags might be used to organize friends/contacts. Ideally I'd have a way to tag everyone I knew, perform basic set operations with the tags, and then synchronize the resulting lists with a variety of social websites. So I could be "friends" on a new site with, say, my 'friends among political junkies' and 'friends from college' but none of my 'friends from work' who were not also 'close friends'.
Employees were pissed off that their CEO was an actual person that likes to have fun like themselves?
The day that a picture of Bill Gates headbanging at an Iron Maiden concert gets leaked is the day that the internet will appreciate him in a "wtf, he's a real person" way.
I don't think Bill Gates has problems as being accepted as real. He might not be the everyman, but the 'nerd/dork' persona is certainly more accesible/real than the usual bland, anonymous, conservative CEO suit.
I really don't see how he's setting double standards -- unless his trip to burning man was a business trip?
The rules, as I can deduce from the article, are that you can't compromise the privacy of guests. Was anyone at the company ever reprimanded for being shirtless on their Facebook profiles?
Yes, but towards the bottom he admits he also wouldn't want his employees to post any picture making the company look bad. Such as a picture of them wearing a company shirt while engaging in illegal activity. That's the gray area he is referring to.
Going to burning man is not illegal, though. But I agree, he shouldn't do stuff he wouldn't want his employees to do. Doesn't he say he wouldn't even mind SM pics of his employees?
Who is to say that all clients prefer a CEO in a suit? Some might prefer the other CEO, so one can not just claim that pictures like that damage the company. Maybe there are just 100 potential customers who like suits, and 1000 who like half-naked men.
that's why you have two facebook accounts. One under your real name that's proper and has your business contacts. And one under some fake name that only your close friends know.
the problem is that facebook is so mainstream that people basically expect you to have a facebook account. If you tell them you don't have one, you look weird.
If you tell them your facebook is for friends, they wonder why they don't qualify. + there are "friends" and friends. One you have no problems showing pictures of you getting wasted, for other it will make you lose face.
I didn't have a Facebook account until... um, last week. Never had any trouble as a result.
My policy on friends is, basically, that unless you're someone who gets all the stupid in-jokes from my college days, you don't get to be my friend on Facebook. Haven't had any trouble from that, either, despite getting an avalanche of friend requests almost as soon as I signed up.
>> Well if it matters - not being on facebook is very acceptable. I form the generation that is "expected to be" on facebook but I dont use facebook and most social networks.
Issues of privacy, and the right to be wrong is atmost important and I think with facebook/mysapce/twitter it makes your life totally accountable to atleast 300+ friends, if not more.
On the basic topic - Ok for a ceo to be on facebook ?
>> Well if your ok to the scrutiny of your peers, pals and foes alike then what the hell ? Upload and let the world know. But remember you lost your right to be wrong.
Facebook was much better for this in the old days when they had a concept of a "restricted profile". You can still do something like it with groups, but it's much more administrative overhead, I wonder how many people bother.
It's not that bad... keep a "safe list". Every time you add a friend either add them to the safe list or don't - it's right there on the add friend dialog. The "safe list" gets to see everything, the other list gets to see nothing but the basic info on the profile. This way you can friend anyone without offending them a rejection but at the same time keep professional contacts at arms reach.
I just tell them it's for close friends. Not many people can qualify that they're close friends right off the bat. If you want to get close, by all means, let's go out for a ramen. Send me an email. Call me up.
> Should a CEO be held to a different standard? Let me know what you think is right.
I don't know, dude. Aren't you also the owner and proprietor? I think that you can do whatever you feel like. But you should figure how much different things should cost you.
Sure. Richard Branson has pictures taken of him waterskiing with a naked woman on his back. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is an intensely private person.
For the record, Branson's equipment is for the much trendier kiteboarding, not wakeboarding. I say this because I'm sure photography has a coolness threshold before it's no longer plausible.
However, not too long from now we will all either be a) so exposed that our simple notions of persona will break down. We can just be people and we can be judged in context instead of these pseudo-personas, or b) we will all be so scared about breaking our personas that we will just withdraw from expressing ourselves honestly.
In the meantime, yea its a broken system. If you want to express the persona of a successful business person, it might just mean you don't get to express yourself as burning man dude until you retire or something. Its a sacrifice because the rest of the world just is not ready to see you as both.