Member-only story
FOCUS ON CULTURE COMPETENCY; CXO FRUSTRATION ONLY MAKES THE CULTURE WORSE.
A highly respected CXO of a successful multi-national, multi-billion dollar organization held a “come-to-Jesus” meeting with the newly hired CHRO/People & Culture Officer and I was invited to sit in. After two years of doing and talking a lot about shifting company culture to be more innovative, agile and digitally blablabla, with little-to-no movement in that direction (according to their survey data)…the frustrated CXO said the following, about his VPs and Directors:
“Look, I want generals. I don’t want soldiers waiting for me to tell them what to do. I want courageous people who will try new things, charge up the hill on their own and figure this @#it out. They should know what to do by now. They’re either soft, lazy, they don’t care or they don’t get it. They must have their head in the sand. People around here need to know that we (execs) are serious about this transformation. Maybe we should fire some of the cowardly people to make the rest of them move faster.”
The CXO next to him added:
“Let’s figure out who those bottom 15% are from the survey — the ones with all of the complaints — and just get rid of them. Problem solved.”
True story.
