Adam Bryant (NYT) takes inventory of his 525 Corner Office columns in his Oct. 27th, 2017 New York Times article How to Be A CEO. While looking for patterns to the corner office, Bryant himself comes to the conclusion there are “C.E.O.s who started out in theater, music and teaching. Others had surprisingly low grades in school.”
Bryant identifies four recurring themes:
1. Applied curiosity.
2. Ease with discomfort.
3. Trustworthiness. In that sphere perhaps the most interesting comment is that of Jeffrey Katzenberg, a tough Hollywood executive, who is quoted as saying “you’re only as good as your followers.”. If you beat the drum of morons, that says a lot about you, doesn’t it ? The quality of your followers is in direct proportion to the quality of your teachings. If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you see I expressly discouraged idiots from reading it. Who needs them ? It is better to have 20 quality readers than 20,000 piss-spot knuckleheads. I don’t need that kind of following.
4. The culture is almost a religion.
“You can have your stated culture, but the real culture is defined by compensation, promotions and terminations.” -Tae Hea Nahm, Managing Director, Storm Ventures.
Show me who do you promote, and I know what your culture is. If your mid -management employees are 70% women, you don’t have to sweet talk me into saying who do you promote. You don’t promote equally on gender.
If you had only one question, what would you ask ? “If you could ask somebody only one question, and you had to decide on the spot whether to hire them based on their answer, what would it be?” Bob Brennan, for example, answered: “‘What are the qualities you like least and most in your parents?” What about you readers, what would you ask, and why, if you were making that hiring decision on a make it-or-break it single question ?
Bryant identifies as “best career advice” that of Joseph Plumeri, the vice chairman of First Data, a payments-processing company, and former chief executive of Willis Group Holdings. Plumeri’s advice: “Play in traffic.”
A lot of these interviews reveal things that most people know and have applied in their lives already. The learning curve, unfortunately is empty because Bryant and his CEOs don’t tell you How To Get there. But that’s why you came to this blog, didn’t you ? To learn what the CEOs don’t want you to know. If you have a 3.2 GPA average these days, good luck with getting hired driving the CEO’s car, let alone becoming the CEO.
Helpful links:
When Number Two Can Step up into Number One’s Spot
Max Cantor on the Way of the Sith
Books I’m reading this week:
I like the direction this is going. To the top !
Don't we need more women working on Wall Street ?
Negative.
I agree with that. There's no discernible benefit to it. Plugs in the system.
You'll find women the majority of Human Resources professionals. They are also the investment managers (see Soros's firm).
Oswald, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. To each their own.
With my bosses, meetings are mental masturbations to them.
Ask: "How do you feel about that ?"
:youtube:CMMI_SPRE14:eyoutube:
The one interview question ?
What's faster than the speed of light ?
Nice one. Here's what Google's been asking
:youtube:Y5Z567S8ViY:eyoutube:
I've been asking candidates this (chuckles):
"Where would you go if you had no place to go ?