According to Ron Carucci, executive leadership coach and co-founder of Navalent, many executives experience “altitude sickness” upon arrival into their roles for the first time. As a result, 50-60 percent of executives fail within the first 18 months of being promoted or hired.
You might recognize some of the signs of altitude sickness. For example, new executives may lack depth within their own competitive context. Additionally, some struggle to let go of doing the work they did before and lose sight of their obligations to develop a long-range strategy. Yet others might say “yes” to everything in an attempt to gain favor, diluting resources across the organization. Finally, some executives simply don’t know what to do with their authority and abandon using their power.
Carucci is a formidable font of executive leadership knowledge. If you’re gasping for air at the top, you’re about to be handed an oxygen bottle.
In This Episode:
- The failure of many executives to understand their roles upon arrival at the top.
- Why leaders spend too little time discussing strategy.
- How leaders fall into the trap of ignoring long-term goals to work on short-term outcomes.
- Why a leader needs to disappoint people at a rate they can accept.
- How a fragmented planning system wastes time and resources.
- The two types of power abuse to watch out for.
Resources:
- Ron’s LinkedIn
- Rising to Power, Ron’s book discussed in this episode
- Ron’s HBR article, “Executives Fail to Execute Strategy Because They’re Too Internally Focused”
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