Be Different or be dead

May 30, 2011

Why supporting the leader makes sense for your long term career success

Source: Pexels

Why supporting the leader makes sense for your long term career success.

Be on the side of the angels during a period of volatile organizational change. You need to support and be seen to support the direction that the company has decided to take whether you are totally in agreement wish it or not.

Clearly you only have one other choice, and that is to leave the organization.

A previous boss of mine used to say: ‘You really have only two choices: one, leave the organization if you can’t support the direction the leader wants to take, or, two, dig down deep and support the boss’s “dumb idea”.

Both thoughts effectively drive home the notion that the non-supportive option is really no option at all unless you are prepared to seek other employment. The higher up the organization you go, the greater is the expectation that you will put aside your personal views and objections and support the CEO’s decision on corporate strategy.

My story

When I was first appointed to an executive position, I was tutored that my main duty and responsibility was to support the CEO no matter what. Obviously this was not intended to be taken literally, however, the underlying theme of what was said resonated with me and served as a guide post for me over the many executive positions I held throughout my career.

Do whatever you can do to be supportive of the CEO and still be true to yourself: the side of the angels..

Of course this principle applies to whatever position your boss holds. It doesn’t have to be the CEO.

When a new CEO was recruited, there was the usual apprehension among the executive team about his personal style, where he would want to take the organization in the future and the role of the existing executive team.
His approach was to pull together the existing executive team to develop a new strategy for the organization supported by a new value system and organization structure.

I found the strategy building process He used very liberating. Here was a leader without any internal bias at all. His only interest was to set a future direction for the business that created growth in shareholder value.

Don’t hold onto the past

Reasons for past decisions made were really not relevant for him and he didn’t want to spend any airtime hearing about “why things were done that way”. One of my peer executives had a great deal of difficulty with this “let’s start out with a blank sheet of paper” approach. He wanted to try and convince the CEO that certain decisions taken in the past should be honored in the new plan that we were developing.

New leaders don’t want to hear why things were done in the past; they want to get on with their own agenda.

I disagreed with my colleague’s view as did the CEO. The strategy sessions became at times acrimonious debates with this out-of-sync individual. The beginning of the end for this person was clear to me, but the situation worsened as we concluded on our strategic course and turned our attention to the really tough decision on the appropriate organization structure that would deliver the desired results. More acrimonious debate ensued with my colleague’s attempt to dominate and sway the outcome, but the final structure mirrored the CEO’s views as you would expect.

The thing was the new organization structure wasn’t new to me at all. In fact it was a model that we had years before, and with all organizational approaches it had its plusses and minuses. So, I found myself actually in the same intellectual camp as my out-of-favor colleague on this matter and the CEO felt my reluctance to jump in and immediately support his call. He handled me with a great deal of respect and patience; asked me to think about whether or not I could support the new structure and let him know.

Even though I had reservations about his structural decision, I supported it in the spirit of helping out the CEO.

The end of the story is that my colleague who fought him tooth and nail on virtually every issue left the company.

I was appointed executive vice president & chief marketing officer.

You always have a choice.

Choose for the long term.

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 5.30.11 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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