You have impeccable credentials – a degree from one of the top rung business schools, good number of work experience with some of the top brands – still you may not get a claim to the CEOs cabin. A good number of professionals fail to get on to the top box in their organization despite having some of the best credential to their credit. Why ?
As we start moving up in the corporate hierarchy, we end up getting exposed to a number of learning’s. Learning’s on functional skills, learning’s on people skills, resource management, and learning to work within certain given constraints. Every next step of our career and the opportunities that we get during the next step, mostly depends on these learning’s.
What allows a person to get to the top rung in an established corporate ?
Our learning’s, un learning, experiences, abilities and aptitudes help us build on some of these abilities:
- Ability to do things and to get things done.
- Ability to mobilize people and resources
- Ability to command respect and trust of colleagues, bosses, and teams.
- Ability to put in the extra effort to run an idea to completion.
- Ability to mobilize opinions, get a buy in for their ideas.
- Ability to understand business, financials, strategy.
- Ability to understand business – people, product, market , customer etc.
- Ability to understand industry, the future.
- Ability to take charge, take ownership of decisions and actions.
- Ability to take risks.
While, building on the above factors and developing ourselves to be rated high on all the above may seem difficult and challenging, an easier way out for most of us is to – “survive”.
Lets call these people the “survivors”.
The term – “survivor”, is not being used in a negative or derogatory manner in this article – we cannot do that, since almost 90 percent plus of population in any organization would fall under this category, and these are the people who are the enablers. Our search however , is for leaders who will mobilize these enablers and steer the ship in the right direction for success, growth and excellence.
Survivors may be of two basic types:
Type 1: Survivors who are good at – “doing what you are asked to do”.
Type 2: Survivors who excel and deliver great results – “addressing what’s is expected as per your KRA and going beyond that in some manner ”.
Normally survivors of Type 1 wont really be concerned if they don’t end up getting the hot seat of a CEO.
Survivors of Type 2 would get concerned if they are given a miss to the top seat. They will fail to find a reason as to why they have been given a miss, despite all great shows, hard work, doing their extra bit and doing so much for the company.
If we evaluate professionals of Type 2 on the above mentioned parameters – they can at best be rated well on Factor 1 to 4, some may even make it to Factor 5 but scoring up on any factor beyond that starts getting difficult.
Search for Leaders:
The story and the actual run for the CEO starts , when you are excelling and are being rated well on most of the ten factors as mentioned above. The last 5 factors being the most important decision parameters for your management to take a decision. In formal business environment, these factors may be well documented in form of Leadership Competencies, and companies may employ formal assessment mechanisms to assess the capability, potential and development prospects of professionals while evaluating them for the big job.
What about functional Type II’s ?
Having said all these , some of you who are into functional roles – Finance, HR, Technology, Marketing may be concerned about possibilities of yourself becoming a contender for the top post. A visible perception is – “Only guys with sales experience normally get to the top box”.
Your normal career track after being a Type II survivor will definitely enable you to get into the CxO box for your respective function – as a functional head. If you are wanting to be a contender for the top post, get strong on your understanding of business, financials etc. These aspects cannot be developed in a day or two. Normally organization’s have formal development plans for selected top talent from functions to be prepared for a business leadership role.
Some simple steps advised would be to – seek and secure developmental opportunities from your organization by way of being referred to advanced management programs, business related cross functional projects and any other assignment’s that may help you bridge the developmental needs from the above 10 factors or with reference to your organization’s leadership competencies.
Just to motivate you functional champions – some examples of leaders who are from functional domains – Manoj Kohli – Airtel , Y V Verma – LG, Santrup Misra – Aditya Birla Carbon Black Business, Rajit Mehta – Max New York Life, are leaders in the CEO role with a functional back ground at some point of time in their careers. There would be many more.
Its not just about being the best, there need to be opportunities as well:
A number of times, you may be given a miss despite you being competent on all the above factors, because of business reasons, already existing bench plan and an existing incumbent who may be continuing for another few years. In such a case benchmarking yourself on the above mentioned factors can help you gear up for the decision time in your company or in some other organization where an opportunity may come up in future.
On a lighter note, a simple Idea to become a CEO: The easiest way for a professional to get a CEO tag is to start you own shop. A start-up based on an awesome idea, or start your own consulting company where in you create your own benchmarks, and you build some thing from scratch. This approach may not be gratifying to most people reading this article, and is not really advised if you don’t have a passion for your business s idea and passion to create.
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Praveen is the Founder & Principal Consultant of KHEdge, a boutique HR & Business Process Advisory firm. Over last 15 years he has advised & worked with promoters, founders, business leaders, HR leaders in areas of - Business Strategy, HR Strategy, Organisation Design etc.