Your Watershed

Change your Identification

It is rather difficult to genuinely identify with an organization in its totality prior to the Stage-4community-centredMode.

Holding any senior post in Stage-4, especially being CEO, leads you to experience your own success and that of the organization as one and the same.

Cf.

  • Power-centred CEOs who view their organization as a fiefdom to be exploited; &
  • Cause-centred CEOs who remain too partial to their own specialist background.

Once you reach Stage-4, you are soon catapulted around into the market-centred zone again. But with all that development under your belt, you can function further down the ellipse. Your focus spontaneously moves from: 

performance of your job
↓
performance of the organization.

Your career self-image changes from:

doing a job surrounded by others doing their jobs
↓
handling an organization surrounded by other organizations.

The challenge for you is contributing significantly to, or leading, development of effective and profitable strategies for the organization. At this Stage, your abilities must include harnessing the skills of senior and middle managers, as well as input (as appropriate) from the Board and any external advisors.

Nothing substantial in society can be achieved by one person acting alone—an organization containing diverse individuals is always necessary. So all later Stages—kinship-, perspective- and reality-centred—are concerned with how to expedite and strengthen the 3 “C”s:

●Collaboration
●Consensus
●Cooperation

within and around your Top Management.

These inter-personal capabilities come to the fore in the Community-centred Stage and remain at the heart of the capacity of any group to achieve. However, the quality of that achievement depends on the three Modes yet to come:

  • Kinship-centred principles will be needed to create unshakeable trust and loyalty in a Core Group.
  • Perspective-centred principles will be needed so new ideas can make a difference.
  • Reality-centred principles will be needed to add a capacity to cut through complexity and uncertainty with a master-stroke.

In contrast to the personal demands of Cycle-1, these next Modes of Cycle-2 reflect entry into an impersonal dimension.

Focus on the Organization

The focus on your organization results in all the initial market-centred principles taking on a more sophisticated quality:

Yes, you must still «work hard»,
but it is equally or more important to you thatClosed the organization works hard.

Yes, you must still «make money»,
but it is equally or more important to you thatClosed the organization turns in a profit.

Yes, you must still «grasp opportunity»,
but it is equally or more important to you thatClosed opportunities for organizational growth and strength are seized.

Yes, you must «maintain your network»,
but it is equally or more important to you thatClosed everyone helps develop good public relations on behalf of the business.

Yes, you must «use your talents»,
but it is equally or more important to you thatClosed organizational competencies are identified, enhanced and exploited.

Yes, you must «manifest integrity»,
but it is equally or more important to you thatClosed a culture of integrity permeates the business and its dealings with other bodies.

ClosedExample:Good Deals

Originally posted: July 2009