Who is your organization’s “Fix -It” person?
An interesting article in the August 16, 2010 edition of Fortune Magazine entitled “Buffett’s Mr. Fix it”. I have found during the course of my career that even the biggest, most successful companies still deploy seemingly simple solutions and methods to both running their businesses and solving the inevitable problems that crop up periodically. We all know of Warren Buffett and his strong record of success at Berkshire Hathaway, and most of know he has a record being a “hands-off” , yet highly attentive CEO.
An apparent paradox, so what does this mean? Is Mt. Buffett the one who sets global strategy and then let his teams run with the ball, or is he a funnel, through which all things Berkshire must flow through to get his sign-off ? If it was the latter, Berkshire would not exist as we know it today - it is too large. Mr. Buffett hires the best managers for his various sub-business (ranging from Burlington Northern, to Geico, to Net Jets, and quite a few others in between) and gives them free reign to run their divisions as they see fit. Yet even in Buffett’s world, things don’t always go as planned – - a VP makes a huge mistake, and the business needs to get fixed and fixed fast. This is when a “go-to” person comes in handy, and this concept is equally valid at small- and middle-market companies, governmental units, and other organizations.
In the case of Berkshire Hathaway, their “Mr. Fix it” is David Sokol, a tough, no-nonsense engineer by training, coupled with the pragmatism of the Midwest. Know to get enormous volumes of work done in a day (no funnel at Berkshire), he can be found daily mingling with employees, customers, business partners, and pitching deals around the world, as well as run three businesses. How is this possible?
Mr. Sokol guides his business through six laws. Any strong company has pillars of strength, value, mission and goals, and Mr. Sokol’s are quite simple: Operational Excellence, Integrity, Customer Commitment, Employee Commitment, Financial Strength, and Environmental Respect. Every employee in all three of his businesses knows these laws, and Mr. Sokol relentlessly drives them hard into every organization he touches, sometimes in ruthless fashion, that they get him the results Warren Buffett expects to see.
One might ask how one, single manager can run three huge businesses at once. He hires first-rate executive assistants and uses them aggressively. They know how he thinks. They keep him organized, they know the group goals (as does everyone else). They know he does not like to be late for meetings; he believes it shows disrespect, so they always build in extra time for meetings. Ironically, even Sokol has made big mistakes ($200 million loss at MidAmerican, for example), he immediately reported the bad news to Buffet, and Buffett simply told him “Don’t make a habit of it”, and sent him right back out to work. To ensure that it does happen again, he uses this misfortune when training young executives (the trust your gut thing).
What are the takeaways here for our own smaller businesses? First, the guy in charge of putting out fires at one of the largest companies in the world is not an Ivy League MBA, but a Midwesterner with common sense, a set of inviolable principles, and a lot of hard work. Mistakes happen, but those who can get up quickly, fix the problem and move on are in better shape than those who dwell on the negative, don’t address the root problems, and continue to be mired in tough times, in tough times.
Who is the go-to person in your organization? Is there one? If not, why not? To be effective, this person must know the company and space intimately, have the trust of the CEO (even when mistakes are made), and must be driven to bring the entire organization up with him/her in their efforts.
Glenn M. Watson
