New Business Ideas 4 U

Archive for the ‘Idea of the Day’ Category

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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In the previous postings, we explored the authors’ concept of levels of mental complexity. This was a new concept to me, and it probably is to you too, so we should explore it a bit further, because it is important to understand it since the rest of the book is based on it.

The following table explains the concept in a bit more detail:

The Three Adult Plateaus Described

So what does all that mean?

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In the previous posting we introduced one of the key foundation ideas of the book Immunity to Change, which was the concept of the three levels of mental complexity. The concept needs further exploration.

The bulk of the population are on or around the second plateau, the self-authoring mind, the characteristics of which are:

Moving through the Levels

The thinking at level 1 is very concrete – very black and white. As one moves to levels 2 and 3, the landscape becomes much greyer.

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