Stronger Culture. Better Performance.

August 21, 2013 in Humanize, Leadership 6 Comments

Are CEOs “Getting It” Before the Rest of Us?

ibmcoverGet a copy of IBM’s recent report on research they did with CEOs (hat tip to SmartBrief for pointing me there). I promise to do some more specific blog posts about it, because it has some important material in there, but I’ll just start with a collection of the sidebar quotes from the CEOs themselves. It looks like these CEOs are moving forward pretty quickly. Maybe even faster than we tend to give them credit?

“We wanted to hire ‘workers,’ but ‘human beings’ show up. Social media is driving that. Work is becoming an expression of personal values.”

Arkadi Kuhlmann, Founder, ING Direct USA

 

“As CEOs, we need new ways of running the organization — or more accurately, we need novel ways of letting the organization run.”

Shaun Coffey, CEO, Industrial Research Ltd.

 

“To increase innovation, we will need to transform our organizational culture to be more open and dynamic.”

Jing Xirui, CEO, Beijing-Fanuc Mechatronics

 

“Enhancing the capabilities of our employees is a key factor for our group’s competitiveness. We must leverage the strengths of those with various backgrounds to generate new value and achieve sustainable growth.”

Koichiro Watanabe, President and Representative Director, Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company

6 Comments

  1. Frank Fortin
    21.08.2013 at 9:25 am

    CEOs often *do* get it. Why the surprise? But often the company’s culture eats them up just as much as it devours everyone else. The good news is that if they want to cause change, they can get something done.

    • Shaun Coffey
      26.08.2013 at 11:11 pm

      Frank – so true about the culture eating you up – sometimes you just have tp crash through. Shaun

  2. O.N.
    22.08.2013 at 12:35 am

    Depending on when the quotes (and research) are from, these CEOs are WAY behind the times. This has been known for probably 10 to 15 years.

  3. Shaun Coffey
    26.08.2013 at 8:47 pm

    It’s always easy to talk of CEOs in the second person. Yes, O.N. – some of us have been doing it for many years, and continue to harness new ways as they emerge. it is always a challenge in the dynamic steady state that is management. Some of those around us don’t get it…..and I guess that is why the system seems to need to re-learn.

    What we can say is that as a heuristic system organisations of people change with every management intervention – thus just because something has worked one, it does not necessarily mean that it will work again.

    Leadership is in the doing, not the knowing.