Jim Citrin Leadership by Example

Ask and you shall receive. When it comes to the art of leadership, this age-old saying holds a lot of truth.

If you want to be a better leader, a better manager, or a more effective professional, focus on questions more than answers. As Starbucks CEO Jim Donald told me recently, "Great CEOs don't tell people anything. They ask good questions so that the right answers emerge and people can make decisions for themselves."

I'd like to suggest an experiment. For the next two weeks, become a student of questions. Pay close attention to the questions that swirl around you -- in the office, in presentations, on the morning talk shows, during the evening news, in advertisements, online, when a salesperson is trying to sell you something, among your family, and with your friends.

See what questions stimulate the most compelling answers. Observe how people react when they're asked something, compared to when they're told. Become a collector of the most interesting questions and pull them out as arrows in your leadership quiver.

Five Important Questions

Let's take a look at some examples where good questions have helped lead people, solve problems, and make sound decisions.

Kevin Sharer joined Amgen, the giant biotech company, as president and chief operating officer in October, 1992, and became its CEO in May, 2000. As the designated heir-apparent who then had about a year between being named the next CEO and officially assuming the title, Sharer had plenty of time and opportunity to build a support base.

"I don't care how long you've been in the company," he says. "You don't just show up and tell everybody how it's going to be. The most important thing I did was ask questions to create an environment where I, and by extension the company, really listen." Exactly how Sharer did this has had ripple effects across companies as far afield as Motorola and the Public Broadcasting Service.

The day in December, 1999, when Amgen announced that Kevin Sharer would become CEO, Sharer sent out a memo to more than 100 director-level-and-above staff at the company, saying he would be scheduling one-on-one time with each of them. Sharer framed the meetings around five questions:

1. What are the five most important things about Amgen we should be sure to preserve and why?
   
2. What are the top three things we need to change and why?
   
3. What do you most hope I do?
   
4. What are you most concerned I might do?
   
5. What advice do you have for me?

Multiple Benefits Emerge

Sharer spent an average of an hour with each of the executives as they shared their views on these open-ended questions. He analyzed and tabulated the results of the first 100 sessions. The findings, which he communicated back across the company through "Listening Memos" and presentations, became his guidelines for shaping his actions and decisions throughout his first year as chief executive.

In addition to providing the input for what became his strategic agenda for the company, Sharer says he was able to develop initial judgments about the different managers, based on how critically they thought and how well they communicated.

Finally, the process itself helped garner buy-in for his program. Why? People appreciate being asked their views and genuinely listened to, whether their specific points of view are implemented.

Telling Results

During my firm's executive-search work, we've been able to help other companies learn from Amgen's Sharer. When we were asked by Motorola to lead the executive search for a new CEO, a similar set of questions became an important foundation for the project.

On Sept. 19, 2003, Motorola announced that for the first time in its 75-year history, it would conduct a search for a new CEO. For a company as proud and traditional as Motorola, this decision created unprecedented anxiety among the employee and management ranks. The board recognized this and took concrete actions to calm the waters, while simultaneously gathering important input into the company's requirements for its new leader.

One week after the announcement, two members of the board search committee traveled to Schaumburg, Ill., and had two-on-one meetings with the top 10 managers of the company. The questions they asked of each executive were based on the same questions that Sharer asked during his first 100 days:

1. What are the three most important things about Motorola we should be sure to preserve and why?
   
2. What are the top three things we need to change and why?
   
3. What skills and background do you believe are most essential for Motorola's new CEO?
   
4. What advice do you have for the search committee?
   
5. Do you have any suggestions as to specific potential candidates?

The results were just what the committee sought to accomplish. The input helped form the basis of key candidate-selection criteria that the search committee used to lead the search, which resulted in the appointment of Edward J. Zander on Dec. 16, 2003. Zander, whose background as a high-energy, recognizable, customer-focused, sales-and-marketing-oriented leader from a top company in the high-technology sector, was a precise fit with the feedback of the Motorola top management team.

Pushing Execs to Think Things Through

Similarly when we worked with the large and diverse board of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to lead the CEO succession process in the fall of 2005, we were able to apply this approach to conducting more than 100 "stakeholder interviews" early in the process. This work helped create a powerful consensus across the broad public broadcasting landscape about the key strengths and critical challenges facing public broadcasting at a time of upheaval in the media, technology, communications, and political environment and what this implied for the requirements for a new leader.

When Paula Kerger, chief operating officer of WNET/13 in New York, was unanimously elected to become the new CEO of PBS in January, 2006, we were able to present the 105-page report of findings from these interviews to Kerger, saving what would have taken her about three months of field work to accomplish.

There are so many other ways that questions can be used in leadership. I asked Debra Lee, chairman and CEO of Black Entertainment Television, how she uses questions to lead the most prominent media company targeted at African-Americans.

"Just the other day, one of my senior programming executives was pitching a new show for the network, and I wasn't sure that it made sense," she said. "But rather than just come out and say so, I peppered him with questions such as, 'What demo are you going after?' 'What ratings are you projecting?' 'What's the after-market for the show' 'How is ad sales going to sell it?' I'm not a programmer, but I wanted to push him hard to think through what he was trying to do," " Lee said.

A Bet-the-Career Strategy

She then pulled out what she calls her best question for such circumstances, something she learned from Mel Karmazin, the renowned Sirius Satellite Radio CEO who had previously been president and chief operating officer of BET's parent company, Viacom. "This is really a bet-the-farm strategy," she said. "Are you fully prepared to bet the farm on this show?"

With that question -- and the underlying bet-the-career implication -- the programming executive went back to the drawing board and came back with a reformulated plan.

No one likes to work with or for a know-it-all. Asking, rather than telling, helps others think critically, which is one of the most prominent skills of the high-performing business leader. Jim Donald, the Starbucks CEO, says the company applies several questions that literally guide the way individuals across the company make decisions. Since the questions are well-known across the far-flung enterprise, they serve as a means to help push decision-making closer to the customer.

"On almost any issue," Donald says, "we use the following questions as filters for determining the right course of action: Is this the right thing to do for the Starbucks brand? Is this the right thing to do for our partners [employees]? Is this the right thing to do for our customers? And is this therefore the right thing to do for the business?"

Donald shared one other example when a question was central to an important decision, this one by Starbucks founder and Chairman Howard Schultz and then-CEO Orin Smith. "In my final interview for the job, they asked me, 'What do you want your Starbucks legacy to be?' I told them that on the day that I die, I want all of the company's front-line employees to be at my funeral." He got the job.