It takes a pretty radical office memo to make headlines, but it happens.
Stories about boldness in the C-suite are hard to resist. These seven CEOs work across a range of industries but have at least one thing in common: They've surprised their organizations and the public, be it with a candid memo, involvement in changing hold music, unique meeting style or unconventional approach to crisis management.
1. The CEO who never wants her company to forget its ugly mistake. It wasn't until February 2014 when GM issued a recall for the Chevrolet Cobalt, years after company insiders knew enough about the car's faulty ignition problem. Two months into her role as CEO at the time, Mary Barra immediately found herself in a hot seat. As bad as the problem was — and still is — she helped bring it to light and dealt with it in a way that strayed from the insulated company's norm.
She did not form a committee over the problem, start a program or launch a 10-step plan. Rather, at a town hall meeting, Ms. Barra told employees, "I never want to put this behind us. I want to put this painful experience permanently in our collective memories," according to Fortune. This statement startled some, as it was starkly different from anything a past GM CEO has said. She fired 15 employees in the wake of the game-changing internal investigation report, and she's moved at least seven high-level executives out of the company in her first eight months as CEO. She has also gone on to encourage more debate in executive meetings, less talk about "culture" (a term she hates) and more focus on actionable daily behaviors.
2. The CEO who wants people to become "raving fans" of a government website. This isn't just any government website, but HealthCare.gov — the recipient of endless (yet warranted) criticism just one year ago. HealthCare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan wants to change that, vowing the website will offer a "highly satisfying" user experience during the 2015 enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1. This includes a shorter and simpler registration process and the ability to "window shop" for plans a week before enrollment opens. It's an ambitious goal for any federal website, but particularly the most notorious and mocked one of all time.
3. The CEO who made a list of the miles he's flown this year (300,000) and the important moments he's missed with his family (his son's emergency surgery, for instance). In a blog post that received much attention this summer, Max Schireson, CEO of fast-growing database vendor MongoDB, announced his plans to step away from his role with the New York company to spend more time with his family in California. His resignation post — titled "Why I am leaving the best job I ever had" — was ultimately an optimistic one, but he also made note of a gender gap in that male CEOs are rarely asked about their work-life work balance. "I recognize that by writing this I may be disqualifying myself from some future CEO role. Will that cost me tens of millions of dollars someday? Maybe. Life is about choices," he wrote. "Right now, I choose to spend more time with my family and am confident that I can continue to have a meaningful and rewarding work life while doing so."
4. The CEO who put the kibosh on work-from-home arrangements. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, made headlines last year when she sent out a memo stating all employees must work in their offices, side-by-side. "Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together," she wrote. The move came as a surprise to many, since Ms. Mayer had advocated for more flexible work schedules when she worked at Google, helping make the company an even more attractive place to work.
5. The senior executive who compared his company's strategy to peanut butter. Ms. Mayer's get-back-in-the-office memo wasn't the first time Yahoo! management made waves. Back in 2006, Brad Garlinghouse, then a senior vice president at the company, wrote an internal memo to employees validating their criticism that the company strategy resembled peanut butter spread across a piece of bread — or as he put it, a "thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing particular." Mr. Garlinghouse then confirmed his hatred for peanut butter and said the entire company should hate it, too. He went on to make several candid statements about Yahoo!, saying the company lacks decisiveness, clarity and a passion to win, with too many people "phoning it in." His memo then proposed a detailed plan to address the problems before ending with three short sentences: "So let's get back up. Catch the balls. And stop eating peanut butter."
6. The CEO who read an email complaint about the company's hold music — and had it changed immediately. What does Apple CEO Tim Cook's inbox look like? I can't imagine. He has openly said he receives hundreds of emails from customers each day, as he made his email address publicly available. One note about something as petty as hold music caught his attention this summer. Mr. Cook actually called the company line to hear it for himself after a customer emailed him about an upbeat rock song that sounded like pure distortion — a sound that aggravated the customer for the 20 minutes he waited for iPhone assistance. According to a Reddit post by the customer who alerted Mr. Cook, "Much to my surprise a lady from Cupertino called me up the next day, saying she'd received a concerning email from Tim about ugly distortion hold music while on the phone, that Tim had tested this himself and agreed that something had to be done. She assured me that the hold music would be tested to make sure it sounded pleasant on all types of phones and connections. The next time I called Apple, the hold music was indeed very pleasant."
7. The tech-savvy CEO who makes people write and read print before a meeting can begin. In senior executive — or "S-team" — meetings at Amazon, CEO Jeff Bezos asks everyone to sit in silence for up to 30 minutes and read six-page printed memos. Mr. Bezos sits alongside them and reads as well. "For new employees, it's a strange initial experience," he told Fortune. "They're just not accustomed to sitting silently in a room and doing study hall with a bunch of executives." It's an especially interesting approach given Amazon's rise to the e-book, but Mr. Bezos says it promotes undivided attention and also helps whoever writes the memo. "There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking."