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I Write Letters to CEOs

johnwdefeo.com

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Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#141

Post by conjectures »

jacquesm wrote: post #108
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being too busy is of course a legitimate reason. Without knowing why he declined it is silly to criticise it, I think.

Not too busy to send letters to the CEO. I never get this: you start a conversation and then when the other party engages you disengage. The CEO's response was about as good as you could wish for and would give an opportunity to influence the view of the company at the level where it matters. That's what you intend when you write to the CEO, you do that because they are the people that can make stuff happen, includin…

> "the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respondent companies."

That's a promising punch line.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#142

Post by Merad »

mysterypie wrote: post #63
groby_b wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time cost for CEOs to respond to your letters is likely zero - they've got staff to handle that. And so replies are really a proxy for "how deeply does the company care about its customers"

> they've got staff to handle that The author is certain that the CEOs responded personally. He says, "[CEO] wrote me a two-page letter that addressed my ideas point by point", "[CEO] sent me a handwritten letter", and "[CEO] forwarded my ideas to his marketing leaders".

There was a great article around a year ago about how the Obama White House handled letters to the president. Obama wanted to personally read and respond to about 10 per day (IIRC), but his response was in the form of jotting down thoughts and notes as he read the letter and handing them off to letter writers who knew the president’s speaking and writing styles well enough to write “his” response. I doubt the average CEO has dedicated letter writing staff, but those who are more serious about responding to customers probably have assistants doing something similar.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#143

Post by coupdejarnac »

user9182031 wrote: post #130
coupdejarnac wrote: post #79

When I was in 4th grade in the '80s, I wrote a letter to the CEO of Atari. I was a stockholder(maybe 5 shares, ha), and I was concerned that Atari could do a few things to make their games more enjoyable. I received a really nice letter in return that addressed my concerns, and a bunch of promotional material was included. In retrospect I wish I had written more letters and perhaps built up correspondence with someon…

You were trading stocks in the 4th grade?

Dad was stockbroker.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#144

Post by aantix »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #77
aantix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't have their consent.

The GDPR defines multiple legal grounds on which you are allowed to process personal data (such as collecting an email address for contacting). Consent is only one legal ground. Another one is "legitimate interest", which a lot of salespeople will use in order to find prospects. However the recipient is allowed to say "not interested, don't contact me again" and you'll have to comply. Furthermore the GDPR does not ap…

Legimate interest can only be established if both parties consent upfront. For which he did not. He just emailed them outright.

With the original article, it's obvious that he's written a lot of CEOs. How many is too many? What if it were a couple of thousand?

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#145

Post by jpmoyn »

bluGill wrote: post #122
auntad wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suspect a valid correlation that's not a causation. If a company is generally doing well, presumably the CEO isn't under as much stress and doesn't have as many firefighting responsibilities as those whose companies are doing poorly. Hence having the time to write a letter to a stranger. Maybe those underperforming companies will bounce back and you'll find a (much delayed) response in the author's mailbox a few…

I think the correlation is real. The type of person who writes to a CEO is likely to do other things for the company. For instance they might be a undercover reporter researching a story. Responding to the letter can give the company free press, which can be far more valuable than the time a personal letter takes. Likewise, many companies have a comments toll free number. Almost nobody will call them (who has a comme…

The example of an undercover reporter sending a letter to a CEO under the premise that they will write a nice article about the company if the CEO responds is pretty absurd.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#146

Post by heavenlyblue »

vortico wrote: post #37

Because of this post, CEOs around the world are receiving 3x emails today. Haha, just kidding. It's actually the opposite. The reason CEOs respond is because they get much fewer emails from customers than you'd imagine. They get their typical solicitations, internal meeting emails, external business discussions, but the customer emails can be interesting and more insightful than any internal letter could be. If you p…

Sadly enough, I've actually had lesser luck contacting local businesses in the UK as a customer, than contacting larger ones.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#147

Post by jpmoyn »

erikb wrote: post #74

This looks like a lot of fantasy confidence. For instance, even if you are quite rich, it's unlikely that Colgate-Palmolive would consider you really an "investor". And of course if you write something to the CEO his 10+ PR team will respond to you, maybe even with something that is signed by the CEO. But do you really think the CEO sits down to discuss shower thoughts about product ideas with you? If you think that…

You are simultaneously missing the point of the article, and serving the point of the article.

The fact that CEOs have politics and PR to worry about is implied. The purpose of the article is that the majority of the CEOs took the time to respond to a small list of ideas from one of their (likely menial) shareholders. The author is highlighting that this there is a correlation between the type of person willing to do this, and a successful CEO. They are making time for the people below them, given the high level aspect of their day to day. They care about the core of their business and the small people that make the whole.

Its obvious that you would be one of the CEOs who didn't respond, and you will be missing out on that 8.97% ;)

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#148

Post by TomVDB »

xster wrote: post #44
vortico wrote: post #37

Because of this post, CEOs around the world are receiving 3x emails today. Haha, just kidding. It's actually the opposite. The reason CEOs respond is because they get much fewer emails from customers than you'd imagine. They get their typical solicitations, internal meeting emails, external business discussions, but the customer emails can be interesting and more insightful than any internal letter could be. If you p…

How does one even discover the email addresses of CEOs (or board members)? It's not like they're searchable online and guessing common formats only gets you so far.

I just googled the email of the CEO of my company.

First hit on Google was https://www.ceoemail.com. And the email address matched the one of our Outlook server.

So it's apparently very searchable.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#149

Post by pfd1986 »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #32
wgerard wrote: post #4

> the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respondent companies. That's actually interesting, because I could easily explain away the opposite result: CEOs who waste their time responding to personal letters aren't focused on improving company performance. For example, there's some potential negative correlation between time spent playing golf and company performance [1]. Grant…

Here's my anecdotal-experience-driven theory of what's going on with the golfing-CEO companies underperforming the non-golfing-CEO ones: it isn't a matter of lost productive hours while golfing instead of working. It's that the golfing CEOs are, as a population, different from the non-golfing ones. The golfing ones are a bit more extroverted and charismatic than the non-golfers; they "look like CEOs". They are more l…

Another theory (possibly complementary) is networking. Golfing / frequenting private clubs can greatly improve CEOs visibility among other CEOs.. I believe Mark Newman's network theory book mention exactly this example.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#150

Post by EthanHeilman »

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…

It seems like a hidden success factor of organizations is alignment between the success of each individual within the organization with the success of the organization. At the size of a large retail operation that seems exceptionally hard.
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