Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to give some advice to my business communications class. I have never gotten a chance to speak or even hear from a CEO, nonetheless, a fortune 500 CEO. I really enjoyed your lecture and thought that you had a very interesting and wise perspective.
You made several points that really stuck out to me. The first piece of advice you enlightened my class with was that every company must uphold a set of values and how it is the CEO’s responsibility to make sure everyone under your management abides by these values. The main value that you instilled in me was the “why question.” You made it very clear that when you are faced with a job, task, or problem you must ask, “why are we doing this [job, task, or problem]” before we ask how. This made a lot of sense to me because I tend to jump straight to the how questions before answer the why question. Since our class, I’ve had to do multiple assignments where I decided to ask “why am I doing this assignment?” before I asked myself “how will I do this assignment?” and it has made a very big difference.
The other major message I took away from your speech was how your brand was an expression of your principles. You gave our class a definition of what you thought CEO stood for. You said, “C is for customers, E is for employees, and O is for opportunities.” I found this to be very interesting because although a CEO is suppose to be of higher importance to a company you still believe that a company is a lot greater than one man. It takes a team with all parts working in sync to successfully complete a job. By respecting and appreciating the work of all team members you constantly motivate them to do better. I believe this is a great way to brand the title of CEO. You also talked about some other values you try to embrace, humility, no regrets, and understanding that some things are out of your control. By knowing your values and brand, you