recycling the same old same old

November 16, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

Guy Kawasaki’s great post, In Search of Inexperience, provides a good rationale for why growing tech companies should consider candidates other than previously successful entrepreneurs for top management positions. It reminded me of a recent conversation with an executive of a major foundation that funds non-profits. We agreed that the leadership vacuum was a major problem.

When I asked her about the profile of the candidate likely to be hired, she responded that its likely a former executive retiring from the private sector who now wants to do something new and “make a difference”. I asked her how that worked out and she replied rather forlornly: not very good. No surprise. They bring the old ways, the old friends and colleagues, the old systems and structures, and the old attitudes, beliefs and perceptions with them. They probably won’t embrace uncertainty or chaos or challenge what they “know”.

In my work with executive clients I’m continually seeing the same paradox: extreme shortage of talent while great people languish or go out on their own.

leadership_gap_demographic.png

Hopefully, companies in both sectors (the lines are increasingly blurred) will begin hiring more creatively but that will require a new kind of leadership, a self-aware and ego-less leadership. On that topic, Dale Dauten quotes Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great”: the best-performing leaders are the quiet, humble ones. High-profile braggadocio is out.

In the meantime, the leadership vacuum grows, hiring practices remain in the dark ages, the investment money languishes, and we all lose.

(Via How to Change the World.)

Filed under: Consciousness, career, going solo
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