New CEO tells the team they have to work 8-5, causing problems with clients in another timezone: 'The policy was lifted within 2 weeks when our West Coast clients couldn't get in touch with us'

CEOs are the directional guiding force of an organization. They're not doing a whole lot of the heavy lifting on their own; that's what the oarsmen are for, or the deckhands clamouring to manage the sails and keep the ship moving. They're the guy standing behind the wheel, controlling the rudder, and deciding where all of that effort is going to take things.

As you can imagine, when your job is literally planning ahead and having the foresight of where you need to be and how to get there, forward thinking, planning ahead, and anticipation are all invaluable skills. But you still need to be properly informed in order to make the right calls.

If a ship is steered off course, it's quite easy and natural to blame the oarsmen for pulling too hard on one side or the deckhands for not positioning the sail correctly. Even if the mistake has obviously been made in the aforementioned manning of the rudder. Similarly, once you find the ship is behind schedule, it's easy to say that the oarsmen weren't pulling hard enough or there simply wasn't enough wind in the sail, when it's really that the ship has been moving in the wrong direction. Of course, once this has befallen, all you can really do is ask the oarsmen to pull harder or silently pray for more wind and hope that a miracle occurs.

It's surprising, then, that so many new managers come in blazing and make sweeping changes without seeking to understand the situation first. They make sweeping changes to redesign the organization in their own vision, changing first and asking questions later—if at all… We see this kind of thing all the time, with employees who are witnessing or have witnessed this taking place firsthand voicing their frustrations or sharing stories of how one simple, but broad sweeping, change has caused everything to go wrong.

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This new CEO couldn't understand why the organization they were joining, a media agency on the East coast of the United States, didn't have everyone 'buzzing" and ready to go right at 8 am sharp. The CEO saw this as disorderly and demanded order be instated: everyone was to work 8-to-5, no exceptions.
Of course, when you're an East Coast company working with West Coast clients, a time zone difference of a full 3 hours, working a rigid 8-to-5 becomes a little difficult for the clients who now have 3 hours less overlap with their provider. But no longer having to take evening calls and having a clean-cut beginning and end of the day was probably appealing to the staff, so they were happy to go along with it.
The new schedule, of course, backfired when clients grew increasingly unhappy, and this forced the CEO to reverse his broad directive and admit that the old way had worked for a reason.
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"Management said we had to work 8am - 5pm (ET). So we did, and let them deal with explaining to our California clients why we weren't available."

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