I'm not sure I agree with David Brook's recent NY Times piece, but the following words did ring some measure of truth to me.
However, I'm not so sure why it is that the CEO's claim such epithets as unidimensional and so forth.
Being humble, diffident, etc., doesn't necessarily preclude excitement now, does it?
"The C.E.O.’s that are most likely to succeed are humble, diffident, relentless and a bit unidimensional. They are often not the most exciting people to be around.
For this reason, people in the literary, academic and media worlds rarely understand business. It is nearly impossible to think of a novel that accurately portrays business success. That’s because the virtues that writers tend to admire — those involving self-expression and self-exploration — are not the ones that lead to corporate excellence."
Read more here.
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3 comments:
The old model of business is to try to predictably control costs and earning by eschewing change and openness to new direction. Think RIAA/MPAA, and pretty much every major corporation and organization out there. So the CEO types described in this article would be very successful under this model, yes.
The new model of business is to take risks, welcome change, and try to adapt to societal needs and desires as they change and grow. To think outside the box, in short, with profit not necessarily being the foremost concern. Many internet-related business ventures fall into this category. But then, once those ventures get bought up by big corporations, they tend to crossover to the old model. The question is whether a company/CEO could be successful by continuing to embrace the spirit of change. I think they could, in which case, your more outgoing personality traits might be a boon. I just think it depends what your definition of success is.
The thing is, not all CEO's are dry, boring people. As Sra points out, there is is much innovation in form and presentation coming out of Silicon Valley. People like Zuckerman of Facebook and the Twitter guys seem to ooze a kind of 'now' and 'hip' productivity that old-school CEO's simply don't.
The culture of business has shifted, too, I find.
Btw, did you watch the character of Walter in the new season of In Treatment?
The thing with business models is that they have to resort to some form of an Occam's Razor. The simplest, [I suppose some call it boring] mode of presentation is the best possible one.
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