I Write Letters to CEOs

Post by wmeredith » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #138

ordinaryperson wrote: post #19

Years ago I wrote a letter to Paul Raines, then the CEO of Gamestop. Mainly I complained how terrible the store experience was. Whereas Apple stores feel like an avant-garde museum Gamestops feel like the inside of a Chuck E. Cheese circa 1987 -- games everywhere, no real organization, no marketing of individual titles or genres, it's just grabbag nonsense of plastic container after plastic container. Days after I se…

I'm impressed but not surprised he responded; that sort of clear, actionable feedback can be surprisingly difficult for a CEO to get, especially in retail. Most retail CEOs don't reserve much time for popping into stores and talking to customers, and store and district managers tend to dislike it--feels like micromanaging. But at the same time, store managers and district managers are often not eager to feed a list o…

Post by acou_nPlusOne_t » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 5:59 AM UTC

acou_nPlusOne_t wrote: post #57

baxtr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work a lot for these guys. The larger companies have whole teams responding to these kind of emails. They triage incoming emails and then the team can send the emails on their own on behalf of the C-level exec.

Anything i get in CC - i automatically delete- some CEO i heard about. Sorry, but personal emails from a CEOs perspective are noise. And just that noise. Even if you want to know about interesting things in the noise, you use dedicated people to filter out.

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

workinthehead wrote: post #168

joncrane wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super cool, and also VERY Scandinavian (culturally).

Finland is not Scandinavian.

Post by afarrell » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 8:58 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #134

jakobegger wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an asshole has a lot more to do with the tone of the message than with the content. In my experience, most people will accept feedback if you do it in a respectful manner. You can tell someone they are underperforming without insulting them. Respect your employees. Even when you tell people to read the manual, you can do so in a way that doesn’t feel insulting. There’s a world of a difference between “RTFM!” an…

> Being an asshole has a lot more to do with the tone of the message than with the content. Bingo. God I wish more software developers realized this. Being open with criticism is important. But for most people who are not a very certain type of programmer, we don't want to hear the criticism given with words like: "What were you thinking? Are you stupid? Of course you don't do x." and "I've found through experience t…

Post by anonymouskimmer » Sat, Jun 02, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #113

jakobegger wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an asshole has a lot more to do with the tone of the message than with the content. In my experience, most people will accept feedback if you do it in a respectful manner. You can tell someone they are underperforming without insulting them. Respect your employees. Even when you tell people to read the manual, you can do so in a way that doesn’t feel insulting. There’s a world of a difference between “RTFM!” an…

This is way more difficult in person than it is online in writing. And the fear of getting it wrong can increase with each time that you actually do get it wrong (leading to you replaying the event in your head, eg).