New Business Ideas 4 U

Confidence 1

This is the second of the areas in which you need to excel identified by Debbie Benton in CEO Material. It comprises six elements.

Feeling broadly adequate

Many people have problems with this one. Is broadly adequate enough? Surely it’s the outstanding people who get to the top? I suggest that isn’t really so. Indeed there are some absolutely  outstanding managers and CEOs, but actually not all that many. If a group of middle managers were asked to name the most outstanding manager they know, I suspect that only a few names would be on each of their lists. Is your boss outstanding? Is your boss’s boss outstanding? (You do not have to share these thoughts with them!).

Debra Benton suggests that if you accept that you are broadly adequate, you have reason to feel quite self-confident, and self-confidence is what you need.

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Craftsmanship

In her book,  CEO Material, Debbie Benton identifies 16 areas on which you should work if you want to be regarded as CEO material. The first of these is Craftsmanship, which is a concept not generally used with reference to managers. A craftsmen is more often a skilled manual worker, who gains the ‘craftsman’ title by being especially skilled at his/her job. The author identifies four areas of managerial skill in which you should make yourself extremely competent. Let’s check them out.

Having a good track record

I don’t think too many people would disagree with this one. Success breed success in the climb to the top of the managerial ladder. But this is not so straightforward as it might appear. It is possible to be seen as ‘skilled’ if you avoid any serious stuff-ups as a junior manager. But Ms Benton, in common with many writers on management, suggests that the way to get noticed is to do something, rather than not doing something. In other words, toeing the party line and playing ultra-cautious is actually not the way to get noticed – to be seen as having a good track record. On the contrary, doing things successfully is what gets you noticed.

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CEO Material

DA Benton, McGraw-Hill,  2009

Debra Benton is a successful consultant and author, with a long list of top drawer clients. She has previously written best-selling books including Executive Charisma, and How to Act like a CEO.

This book is sub-titled ‘How to be a Leader in any Organization‘ but could almost be sub-titled ‘Debra’s Book of Lists,’ because each chapter contains lists of characteristics and is filled with exhortations of what you should do if you want to to be regarded as a potential CEO. In her Conclusion chapter she actually lists 365 things you should do – one for each day of the year – to get yourself regarded as potential CEO material.

The author follows the same approach in each chapter. First, she gives a short bulleted list of key elements in the chapter topic. This bulleted list generally contains three points, each of which becomes a section heading a little later on. A couple of these lists are slightly longer. Then she lists the behaviors that a budding CEO should exhibit to demonstrate competence in the topic area. The list for Chapter 1 Have a Good Track Record, for example identifies 20 such behaviors, though this is the longest list in the book. Read the rest of this entry »

The Socialized Mind – an Example

In the last posting I talked of the way children are socialized when  they are young. This also happens in business, with even more pernicious results. Let me share a story with you.

Many years ago, I was consulting to a large Asian conglomerate – name withheld to protect the guilty. One of the responsibility areas of my specific client contact was international recruitment. My client contact spent a lot of time – and company money – traveling the world talking to young nationals who were on the verge of graduating. His purpose was to entice these national graduates – from the best business schools in Europe and America – to return to their homeland and work for this company.

That is fair and fine.

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