Is your social life getting in the way of your job?

A dear friend of mine is CEO of a very large retail business out east. She had been working on recruiting a new head of merchandising and thought she found the "pot of gold" in a particular candidate. After many interviews she made the decision to hire the candidate and then she learned that he had some social conflicts that would be barriers to starting the job promptly. This was her first sign that his commitment to this job was not as high as she had predicted. Then a few days before he is about to begin he calls and says that his wife's family is getting together for Thanksgiving and wanted to make sure this would not be a problem for him to take off this time. For those of you not involved in retail, I will remind you of "Black Friday" the single largest day of retail sales. This new employee (or perhaps not) was asking for the day off before he even began.

Some CEO's would have stayed with the candidate even after this experience. Not this one. She retracted the offer and has begun the process anew. She knows what commitment feels like and this was not someone she was going to depend on to participate to romance customers to spend money in such a tough economy.

Does it matter when you enter the conversation?

If you watched the Wizard of Oz or read the book you would be certain you know who are the "good guys" (The wizard and Galinda) and who is evil(Elphaba - Wicked Witch). If someone asked you to make a bet you would probably have taken the bet, I know I would have. That is until you see or read Wicked when you find out that what you thought you new, you really didn't know (The social and political context of the situation - That The wizard and Galinda were discriminating against animals and Elphaba was organizing to save them). You were late to the seen and your knowledge in understanding was obscured by the timing of when you entered the story.

When you are leading organizations you often are coming in late to the conversation especially when it is a larger organization and moving fast around the country or world. How do you know that your not experiencing the same gap of information that the reader of Wizard of Oz experienced by being late to the story.

What is the whole story? How do you suspend your prediction of where the group or organization is and dig deeper into thier shared reality.

Challenging Questions

Challanging Questions

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