Zuckerberg’s new year wishlist deserves kudos
There can be few CEOs on the planet who are under as much constant scrutiny as Mark Zuckerberg. He is perhaps the best-known member of the exceedingly small group of exceptionally famous corporate leaders who need only appear on social media or tease a new product offering to generate masses of media attention, with pundits and customers deliberating on their every sentence.
A case in point is Zuckerberg’s recent announcement of his 2018 personal challenge, the continuation of a tradition he started way back in 2009. While previous years have involved more truly personal efforts — such as aiming to regularly pick up a new book or striving to learn a new language — the 2018 edition has garnered an especially large amount of attention because of its more far-reaching mission.
Zuckerberg’s stated goal is nothing short of “fixing” some of the key issues and areas of criticism that Facebook has been facing in recent years. His yearly goal-setting statement talked about taking efforts to ensure Facebook is “enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools”, referencing such enormous subjects as ensuring time on Facebook is wellspent and protecting its community against online abuse.
Well, it didn’t take long for a number of commentators to point out an apparently glaring hole at the centre of this year’s goal. Making sure the company you lead is acting responsibly and running effectively are surely core elements of the role of any leader; not just in 2018, but every day of every year.
Arguably, this logic runs on the assumption Zuckerberg is really setting himself the goal of simply operating as Facebook’s CEO throughout 2018 ... something we all presumed he had been doing for some time anyway.
Of course, you can view this from another perspective too. You could argue that Zuckerberg is demonstrating an impressively honest version of leadership. One where faults in the business, perhaps even — by implication — in his own leadership, have been identified and efforts devised to set a new course.
He has accepted that the company has challenges, that there are areas where it can certainly do better. Moreover, he has also publicly made it is his personal responsibility to make these issues right. He hasn’t blamed his team, nor pointed fingers at external influences or market concerns.
His business, after all, is still highly profitable, and there are certainly others that might have comfortably hidden behind the astounding profits and deflected criticism, rather than tackling them head-on.
Where your view on this issue falls will likely rest on your own personal view of Facebook as a company, as well as where you place the balance between a company’s responsibility to its shareholders (something Facebook has largely been very good at addressing) and responsibilities to its wider pool of stakeholders — its employees, customers, and society at large.
Leadership lesson
Either way, I would suggest there is a leadership lesson for every CEO. Setting yourself personal and professional goals as the New Year chimes in is hardly a revolutionary concept in itself. However, doing so publicly — at least in terms of publicly stating plans to your employees — is an effective way to actively demonstrate your leadership direction and priorities over the coming year.
It provides an opportunity for public reflection on your personal leadership and business successes, and it allows your followers to see the thinking behind any new initiatives they will put into action over the next year.
Importantly, this approach also allows you to draw a direct line of responsibility and accountability between yourself and the stated goal — something that potentially represents both a professional win and a business success. In Zuckerberg’s case, for example, we could all be sitting here in early 2019, praising the huge leaps that Facebook has taken to address the criticisms and challenges it has faced.
We might all be amazed by how far it has come in such a small amount of time, and we will all naturally draw a connection with the personal responsibility the CEO took for making it happen. This might be the responsibility he simply had as CEO anyway. But he has, nevertheless, delivered on the promise he made.