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It is totally clear to me that any
company wanting to be successful must have a very precise
sense about its mission, what it is trying to achieve,
and what its goals are. These goals must be very clear,
simple and, most importantly, understandable.
It is important for a CEO to really
keep repeating the same basic principle and make sure
that everybody at every level of the organisation shares
the mission, shares the dream and that everybody understands
what needs to be done.
By the same token I am a true believer
that the senior management sets the tone, starting with
the CEO. For example, it is very difficult to say to people
that they have to save money if there is then a management
style that is wasteful.
It's hard to create a culture of hard
work and responsibility if the chief executive is not
held responsible and there is no culture of hard work
at the CEO level.
When I went to Italy [with Gucci] back
in 1994 my number one priority was to get everybody internally
to really understand our mission and what we were trying
to do: then to start executing it properly.
I used to be there all the time; I'd
go in at the crack of dawn and be there until very late
every night, working at weekends, calling everybody at
all times.
Every time I said that something needed
to be done I kept following it up and calling back, saying:
"Is it done? Is it done?" I was very visible.
At the time I was living in Florence
and visiting all our suppliers throughout the area, so
I had a very strong presence within the organisation and
made sure that everybody communicated with me. Most importantly,
I used to communicate with everybody all the time.
At that time I had more people reporting
to me and the company was smaller. But certainly the sense
that things had changed and things needed to be done was
very strong, because they saw me working full time.
The prior CEO had never gone to Asia,
which is bizarre considering how strong luxury companies
are in Asia. So I started travelling there constantly
as this was an important market for us to grow, and there
was a lot of showing people a very strong personal commitment
on my part.
As a CEO you have to set the tone, be
the leader and lead by example, making sure that everybody
views you as someone who practises what he preaches.
Your mission has to be simple, clear
and repeated all the time to make sure that it filters
through the entire organisation; you need to make sure
that everybody really understands what the goal of the
company is, what you're trying to achieve, and how you're
going to get there.
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