Transforming organisations

Trying too hard

The more that anyone understands about exactly why they want to be an executive in an organisation, the easier it is to align their tacit knowledge with the needs of the business.

I have one CEO who travels one hundred and two miles to work every morning and one hundred and two miles home every night, quite apart from marketing and promotional evenings. He makes no bones about wanting the six figure salary he earns.

Another reads her emails at 10 o’clock on a Friday night and replies at 4 o’clock on a Saturday morning. She is a fourth generation family business CEO with a spiritual need to pass the business on to the next generation in better shape than when she inherited it twenty years ago. She wants to leave a legacy.

Yet another CEO loves his customers above all else. He really will do almost anything that customers ask, request or demand. At base he has low self-esteem. The bottom line is that he needs approval and when customers order, he gets his fix.

When you meet an executive that seems to be trying too hard, they usually need to do a little more work on themselves in the first instance. That way they will align their energies more closely to the organisational bull’s eye.

Or they will leave.

posted by Tim @ 1:40 PM