How Not to CEO

Samuel Levenson told us that “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself”.  With that in mind, here are a few mini stories from my journey.

Throughout my years at school, I remember teachers, parents, uncles, and aunts constantly saying, ‘School days are the best days of your life; learn all you can.’ I heard it so often that I’d switch off the moment anyone started with ‘School days…’

I never had the sense to ask, ‘Why are school days the best days of your life?’ If I had, they might have told me that:

1. These are the years when you have the time to learn.
2. If you commit to learning, it becomes a pleasure rather than a chore.
3. Well-educated people often secure better jobs and earn more, and then…
4. Money provides choices and opens doors to more possibilities in life.
5. Even if you start your own business, a solid education is immensely valuable.

One of my nephews took what I initially thought was a relatively dull path: he studied accountancy – and he was good at it. He joined a venture capital company, where life quickly became more interesting and rewarding. Later, he bought his own business, which he eventually sold for millions. From nothing, he built something remarkable, all because he understood numbers inside out.

What I’ve learned is that school days are indeed an excellent stepping stone to a rewarding and fulfilling life.

I try to explain this to all the young people I know, but I never start with, ‘School days are the best days of your life!’

After leaving school, I went straight into my parents’ horticultural business, where, for the next 15 years, we grew cut flowers to sell at wholesale markets. During the summer, we specialised in gladioli.

Each spring, we planted various gladiolus varieties all at once – just like everyone else who grew gladioli at that time.

The corms of varieties that bloomed in July, August, and early September had an excellent flower yield per corm planted. Typically, every 100 corms would produce 90 or more flowers.

To maintain a steady supply of flowers through late September and October, we grew many “late-flowering” varieties. Unfortunately, these only yielded 20 to 30 flowers per 100 corms.

Since all corms were relatively expensive and cost the same regardless of variety, the late-flowering ones consistently resulted in a loss.

Years later, long after I left horticulture, I had neighbours who built a successful business growing gladioli.

Like us, these neighbours needed a steady supply of flowers into late September and October. However, instead of using low-yield, late-flowering corms, they only planted high-yield, earlier-flowering varieties – but did so in a sequence, extending the planting season. As a result, they enjoyed the benefits of high-yield varieties throughout autumn.

Why, oh why, didn’t I think of that during those 15 years, tramping up and down the gladioli fields under the scorching summer sun?

Our family horticultural business gradually expanded, and we eventually acquired a glasshouse nursery that was quite large for its time – the glasshouses covered an area larger than a football pitch.

In spring, we grew a variety of annuals, or “bedding plants,” for sale to garden centers. For the rest of the year, our main crop was Solanum, or “Christmas Cherry,” a red-berried pot plant popular during the holiday season.

Ideally, we should have sown the Solanum seeds in early spring, right when we were at our busiest with the bedding plants. As a result, the Solanum always took a back seat and were invariably sown late, which meant the plants were never quite as well-developed as they should have been by Christmas.

We did this for 10 years. A bit of forward planning could have given us a full decade of higher-quality Solanum.

Around the same time we were growing Solanum in glasshouses, we also cultivated Alstroemeria as a cut flower in outdoor beds, and we did this for about 10 years.

Each year, roughly 25% of the cropping area produced excellent-quality flowers, 50% was average, and the remaining 25% was poor. For a decade, my family and I puzzled over why certain areas performed better than others. Was it due to nutrient deficiencies in certain patches of soil, or was a virus affecting some of the plants?

Alstroemeria takes about three years to reach full productivity, so setting up experiments to determine whether we had a nutrient issue or a virus would mean waiting three years for answers. This seemed like “too long” to wait, so we never pursued it.

If we had conducted the necessary experiments in the first year and identified the problem, we could have enjoyed many seasons of high-quality crops – and I might still be involved in horticulture and growing Alstroemeria today.

During my years in horticulture, we had an outstanding plant health advisor, Harry. He worked for the government at a time when they were committed to providing free advice to agricultural and horticultural businesses.

Harry traveled nationwide, encountered countless issues, and kept us informed on best practices – which new innovations were effective and which were not. Whenever a new pest or disease emerged, he promptly reported back to us.

Harry was so good at his job that I, along with four other local businesses, decided to employ him full-time.

With Harry now working exclusively for us, he could devote all his attention to our needs – but he no longer had access to the broader, national perspective he once had.

In gaining more of Harry’s time, we had unintentionally made his insights less valuable to us.

I’ve always had a fear of asking questions that might make me look foolish.

About 30 years ago, I attended a meeting on the future of technology with four friends. During the presentation, I held back from asking any questions. But afterward, while chatting with my friends, I finally felt emboldened to ask about a major subject of the presentation we’d just attended. As it turned out, none of my friends knew the answer to the question I had in mind.

The question? ‘What is the Internet?’

The difference was that he was an excellent negotiator, while I was not.

The deals he secured with suppliers I’d worked with for over 20 years were astonishing; he saved the company tens of thousands of pounds.

Sandy is still well liked by everyone, but he now runs a far more successful company.

A few years ago, we had an employee who wasn’t pulling his weight. He was a pleasant enough guy, but his poor work ethic constantly frustrated me. With five other hardworking employees around me, I thought we could “carry” him and that, together, we might help him improve.

It didn’t work. Gradually, everyone – including myself! – began to feel less motivated, thinking we didn’t need to put in as much effort. Thankfully, he ultimately decided to leave of his own accord.

It’s true what they say about “one rotten apple in a barrel.”

For those choosing to pay by debit or credit card, the process was convoluted and clumsy, and we struggled to improve it.

We eventually switched to Stripe for customers wishing to pay by card, and the results have been really surprising – checkout drop-outs have significantly decreased.

I’m not saying that Stripe is better than PayPal, as each has its place. What I am saying is that we should have evaluated Stripe much sooner than we did.

“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

I haven’t spent enough time reading and listening to knowledgeable people like Donald Rumsfeld, and as a result, I’ve been slow to uncover the “unknown unknowns” in my life.

If I had spent more time thinking and less time “doing” then my businesses would have progressed much faster.

“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Sam Levenson

Footnote: I often include a quote from a notable person in the articles I write because everything I want to say has been said better by someone else.  I put the quote at the end so that people don’t find it before they find me.

Colin King – CEO of HR Quizzes