What Chief Executives Really Want from their Senior Staff

Created on Friday, 23 September 2011 09:38

Published on Friday, 23 September 2011 09:38

	By Mark Stephens Follow @MStephens21

I have just returned from a very relaxing family holiday in Cuba and, as usual, I used this time to catch up on some serious reading.

One of the books that I chose to take away with me was Slingshot by the pioneering innovator, Gabor George Burt, who is renowned for challenging conventional thinking within business.

Gabor, advocates the benefits and tactics associated with defying conventional wisdom by substituting a ‘niche’ strategy, with “creativity”, in order to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. His philosophy encourages us to believe that by creating something new and different (and ideally more effective), we can eliminate the competition and infatuate our existing and prospective customers through a process of ‘life-style’ and ‘work-style enrichment’. This can subsequently lead to accelerated growth and increased market share.

Shortly before this holiday, I heard several debates on the radio, with government ministers and representatives from the education sector. They argued over the importance of obtaining higher education levels in core subjects, such as Science, Maths and English Literature, in order to succeed in business. The point had been laboured, by most contributors on the show, that without competent levels within these core subjects, progression within business was made significantly harder.

As an employer of more than 20 staff, I fully understand the importance of numeracy and the written language. Nothing annoys me more than sloppy communication by my managers. However, while reading this book and digesting Gabor’s teachings, it really made me think about the relevance of ‘creative thinking’ as an essential factor in the development of staff that want or need to play an important role within our business and who can potentially assist with strategic direction and decision making in the future.

In May 2010, an article that appeared in Bloomberg Business Week called “What Chief Executives Really Want”, there was a reference to an IBM survey of more than 1500 Chief Execs, where creativity was recognised as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. So, just to be clear, it was NOT ‘operational expertise’ or ‘industry knowledge’, ‘interpersonal skills’ or even ‘innovation’ and it most definitely did not reference the core educational subjects, so heavily weighted in the radio debates that I had listened to.

What I find most interesting about this, is the obvious mindset change required by employers, when it comes to identifying those individuals that can be tasked with providing the company with inspiration and direction. For businesses to truly develop, they need to break away from conventional thinking, limit the internal tinkering and look to encourage more creative thinking in order to evolve.

I myself was never an academic. I always enjoyed clowning around at school far too much to have excelled in any core subjects, but I was thankfully blessed with enough intelligence to get by without busting a gut. I also recall that I was not short on creative thinking capability, especially if it involved elements outside of the education curriculum.

So should it have been a surprise to anyone that I play such an influential role within establishing the strategy of our organisation? Maybe not to the people that I work with, who witness the passion and energy that I have for what I do on a daily basis, but I am aware that those academics that were responsible for my education and some of those potential employers that looked at my predominantly average grades all those years ago, would probably have not earmarked me for future success.

So the point is, when we are selecting our potential leaders for the future and considering resources that can help influence the strategic direction of our organisations, we should not forget the importance of looking for evidence of creativity as a skill and as an asset that should be highly valued?

After all, “Its what the boss really wants”.