Lengthy reigns at the top may be the next thing to get disrupted.
Carol Ryan – Wall Street Journal Writer
What’s the CEO’s role in COVID time? “Point people to the light at the end of the tunnel” according to the Wall Street Journal.[i] The challenge: many CEO’S are unfit for VUCA duty. In other words, they are not ‘future ready’. Take a look at what investor’s say in the Self Disruptive Leader survey from Korn Ferry (BTW: Pre COVID):
- “78 percent (of investors) insist the CEO is critically important when deciding in which companies to invest.”
- “83 percent (of investors) cite an exceptional CEO as critical to an organization’s success in disruptive times.”
- Bottom Line: “Fewer than two in ten corporate leaders have the skills required to take their companies into the future” according to investors.[ii]
COVID is a great opportunity to reinvent companies. A critical result of the above survey is executives can’t make smart VUCA decisions quickly. In COVID time, leadership decision making and management problems solving seem to be lacking. Much of the same can be said of political decision making. Got doubts? Think Brexit. Think President Trump. Think Xi Jinping.
Let’s look at GE again. GE was the most valuable company 20 years ago. It had the ‘best and brightest’ leaders and managers. It invented much of the third industrial revolution. But, things happened. Bad adaptation. Bad decisions. Bad timing. Much of its value has tanked along with weak profits. GE CEO reported in the Wall Street Journal (pre COVID):
“I’m not going to put the company’s reputation at further risk … We are going to come up with guidance when we can walk people through it where the math adds up, and we can be very clear on how we are going to go about delivering on those numbers.”[iii]
Work Lesson Earned: So, how do executives in your organization solve problems and make decisions? How do executives manage risks? What makes them successful? If you’re an individual contributor, do you want to be a supervisor or manager in your organization?
[i] ‘A Crash Course in Crisis Management’, Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2020.
[ii] ‘Failing the Grade: Investors World-Wide Say Current Corporate Leadership Is ‘Unfit’ for Future, A Major Korn Ferry Study Finds’, Korn Ferry, March 12, 2019.
[iii] ‘GE Asserts Progress as Ills Persist, Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2019.