Managers Suck

Managers suck. That's not quite what Verne Harnish said on the first day of CTI 's annual RVP meeting. But it's clear that he wants to drive that word, manager, and everything it implies, like micromanagement right out of the business world.?

I love that idea. I love a lot of Harnish's ideas; he's a mentor, and his core concepts have powered CTI's growth. If you've never heard of him, his books, "Scaling Up," "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits," and "The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time" are all fantastic.

Verne is coaching CTI's 'c-suite' folks this week. A few weeks ago I talked about CTI-U's Integration Boot Camps and how training AV technicians in-house helps CTI deliver a better customer experience. That makes us stronger as a business. We aren't just looking out for our techs on the front line of AV at CTI.

We grow our executives, too. Think of our RVP gathering as a very intense tune-up. We examine our strategy and execution. We discuss fundamentals. Verne peppers us with questions. He seeds the room with concepts and ideas. He is coaching this room full of executives, and I'm always delighted to hear my team working things out, knowing they're absorbing the lessons.?

C-suite is a commonly used phrase at CTI, it's even in the employee manual. Heads up: everybody at this meeting has a fairly modest office. A lot of them don't have windows. Even I don't have a corner office, and I'm the CEO. I'm sure some folks just read that and crossed CTI off their list of potential employers.

I'm OK with that.?

Growth sucks cash. This is the first law of entrepreneurial gravity. And nothing ages a CEO and his or her team faster than being short of cash. In fact, Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen, in their best-selling book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, found that successful companies held three to 10 times more cash assets than average for their industries, and they did so from the time they started.

Verne Harnish

That's from the first chapter of Verne's "Scaling Up, How a Few Companies Make It...and Why The Rest Don't." The concepts Verne has taught me are a big part of CTI's DNA. I'm obsessed with cash flow and growth. My team is obsessed with cash flow and growth.?We're also obsessed with growing the company without burying it in debt.

So our offices are modest but perfectly adequate. We could move into a fancier building in a more expensive neighborhood. We could spend a small fortune on a state-of-the-art video wall greeting potential clients.

There's a lot we could spend money on.

But we're spending it on Verne, who's helping our executives be coaches and leaders, not managers. We're spending it on flying in our AV Technicians to attend CTI-U's Integration Boot Camps. We're spending it growing CTI-U's curriculum so everyone at our company can keep learning. We're spending it to hire the right people so we can put them in the right place. We're spending it on upgrading the tools we use so we can deliver the best possible experience and value to our customers.?

If that sounds attractive, we're hiring: https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/ctiav/jobs/

As always, if you have any AV or Live Events needs, please reach out to us at CTI .

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