This CEO has the hardest turnaround job in the world

THE UNLUCKIEST TURNAROUND CEO

We all love the turnaround story.

Tiger Woods is the ‘comeback story’. But really, it’s about a man – one of the biggest brands Nike’s had since Michael Jordan – who went from hero to zero in the matter of a few years and came back to win The Masters. Everyone cried a bit as he celebrated.

And in the business world, there have been plenty of tales of 180s.  

There’s Apple, who nearly hit bankruptcy before Steve Jobs came back and they became the behemoth ‘fruit company’ that you see today. Despite his ‘Marmite’ personality, he created a product that’s so worshipped that it’s been called a cult by one expert.

Then there was the book of superheroes in Marvel, which went bankrupt before finding itself again, and then being bought by Disney and has produced a string of box-office smashing hits, like the upcoming Avengers: Endgame, that's expected to make well over $1 billion. . That was the sort of tale a comic book writer would have been proud of (if he liked writing ‘business comic books’ (BTW, it doesn’t sound like a concept Silicon Valley would be interested be, future HBSers).

Others have fallen to the wayside, been taken over, and been revitalized. The owners weren’t the asset strippers but those who went by the adage “if you want to save money, boot out the consultants) approach rather than the “fire everybody” approach. I like this Edward Lewis approach, personally.

But there is one CEO who has shown gravitas, kindness, love the world over, and commands more respect that Broadcom CEO Hok E. Tan ($120m in 2018), Michael Rapiro ($70.6m in 2018), and Disney’s Bob Iger (compensation: $65.6m in 2018)) put together. No-one has talked about his pay, because despite being the biggest CEO in the world, he makes around €60,000 a year. His annual general meetings put Warren Buffett’s annual Berkshire Hathaway yukele-toting cultathon to shame and if the new CEO of Wells Fargo thinks he has to deal with a lot of rubbish from previous administrations, then this guy has had plenty of more.

So who is he?

He’s not a Cook.

He’s not a Buffett.

He’s not a Bezos.

He’s not an Iger.

He’s not Tiger Woods.

He's so much more powerful than any of these 'cult leaders' combined.

He’s Pope Francis.

Coming in in 2013, he walked into a job amid a plume of white – the CEO of the Catholic Church - where the brand had lived in the toilet of self-caused toxic excrement. And years. And years. Without the aid of a cleaner, or even a flush.

The waste was corruption on a massive scale. It’s a problem he decided to deal with instead of ignoring it (despite it being so entrenched. It’s not helped that your CFO was found guilty of sexual abuse earlier this year).

The waste was years of infighting between factions, which has been described as the worst since the 1970s.

The waste was the most toxic where it was most shocking: Centuries of sex abuse by priests, and then the sort of cover-up that was incomparably vomitous.

The product of the waste was utterly toxic. People don’t just ‘not like’ the company he works for, they utterly hate it. He’s had to fight fire after fire, and if something goes wrong – he’s left with the bloodied face. He’s the face of things – and proudly so (unlike his predecessor who seemed to do precious little during his time in charge).

But he hasn’t shirked responsibility “Yeah, well other churches are getting done for this stuff, so why do constantly get it in the neck?” or try and lessen what had happened, but he’s battling a horrific situation. He hosted a summit particularly focussing on sexual abuse, and was taken to task for not putting in more stringent policies.

He’s also annoyed traditional buyers of the Catholic product by saying ‘unholy’ things like “Maybe divorce is necessary in some cases, and maybe we should let divorcees have Holy Communion”. He’s been called ‘liberal’ – something of an insult. But yet he ploughs on to make changes, and he continually has to push the sort of boulder than no CEO would want up the insurmountable hill of criticism, with no share price or personal reward.

Would anyone want that job, particularly if there’s little or no financial personal reward?

Not me, sir.

But unlike previous incarnations, he seems to like humility. A lot. He's boss of one of the biggest companies in the world (1.2 billion members at the last count), but you never see the numbers touted on social media. He's  not going to wear a Make Catholicism Great Again hat anytime soon. He’s washed the feet of refugees, inmates in prisons because he believes the most important people must serve the most marginal, and more heartbreakingly, has knelt at the feet of leaders of warring factions, kissing their feet and begging for peace. Oh, and if you want to ‘go modern’, his tweets are messages of peace, and he gives a pretty good, humble TED Talk.

When asked about by a gay man what he thought of the church’s approach to that on a recent BBC program he said: “Giving more importance to the adjective rather than the noun, this is not good. We are all human beings and have dignity. It does not matter who you are, or how you live your life – you do not lose your dignity. There are people that prefer to select or discard people because of the adjective. These people don’t have a human heart.” And putting his money where his mouth is, he's made sure that The Vatican now provides baths and haircuts for the homeless, and refuses to stay in a plush apartment (imagine Goldman Sachs CEO DJ D-Sol doing that). 

And for me, that’s the mark of a good CEO – someone who can come from their top-floor and be as comfortable talking to the janitor as his directorship. And that’s why – despite the fact I’m not going to put all of my funds in his company, I’d want everyone to model his leadership. 

Models are great. 

But would you really want his job?