What can I do for you today?

When this post was originally written, I had recently written about psychopathy and management in a way that would make would think I experienced it on a daily basis, despite the fact that this is not the case. So therefore I found it appropriate to provide an example of the opposite; the best CEO I have ever met and had the pleasure to work for.
He was brought into a company in which I was then employed, with what was later understood as the agenda to sell the business to the highest bidder. He was presented to the rest of the company in an information meeting called for in a flash - and the meeting started with this one strange man going around to all the staff, greeting and shaking hands with all hands. After this he told us who he was, a little about his history, and what he stood for - ending up in the mantra:

What can I do for you today? 

And actually, he succeeded - by taking the first step and practicing his mantra, by highlighting that management did whatever it could for the employees, as far as it was within his power - to make practically the entire company operate in the same way; to meet each other in the offices with a spirit of "what can I do for you today?"
And finally - when the company actually found a buyer, and probably about one-sixth of the company's employees refused to sign a new contract that gave the new owner the intellectual property rights to virtually any idea that the employees would to get at work or in the leisure time, awake or asleep, it was he - personally - who were able to make ends meet. Because everyone knew he was a man whose word was to be trusted.
If anything, there is certainly a phrase that I have brought with me from there to remember to this very day. It may well happen that I do not often speak it out verbatim. But I try my best to live the spirit of it.
(Translated from Hvad kan jeg gøre for dig i dag?, originally published September 16, 2010)