REINVENTION REQUIRES REVEALING....
What’s needed at this economically challenging time according to Jeffrey Swartz, president and CEO of the Timberland Company in the New York Times Sunday Business Corner Office column (Dec. 20, 2009)?
People need to bring their personal selves to work – (not meaning an invasion of privacy). In his words,”A willingness to be exposed, a willingness to acknowledge and value the personal dimension.”
Swartz said there’s no chance in these economic times that a company “is going to be able to reinvent itself, with the speed and ease that it needs to, unless we bring more than our intellects to the table”. In hiring, he said he’s got to find “people who are comfortable with fuzzy logic, who are comfortable being exposed, who are comfortable being wrong, who don’t value as the first notion, ‘I got the answer, Boss.’”
He sums up what he is looking for as: 1) comfort with ambiguity; 2) faith in a solution; and 3) a commitment to fight for a worthy outcome.
If you are a leader, are you looking for this make-up in your hires? Do you appreciate the mission-committed risk-takers? And allow them to be wrong sometimes without rebuke?
If you are aspiring to take on meaningful, game-changing work, are you willing to reveal what really matters to you and fight for it?
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