Board-Level Guidance
Which CEO is Right for Us?The Board of a large health care concern was debating the strengths and shortcomings of two finalist CEO candidates.
The search committee presented to each candidatea description of the identity of this 50-plus year-old company – what they had come to regard as its core purpose – and how that identity had contributed to its success over time.
The question they posed was, “Under what circumstances would you alter the course of the organization?”
One candidate paid lip service to the company’s longstanding purpose, but asserted the need to be prepared to change everything if need be, in order to stay relevant in a shifting market.
The other individual, citing the need to constantly evolve, acknowledged how the company’s identity had obviously played a central role in its growth. Demonstrating a clear appreciation for the need to fully understand the forces that had accounted for the organization’s success to date, he was awarded the job.
On the strength of these past two decades of implementing identity-
based management, the vitality of many organizations, and the lives of tens of thousands of employees have been enhanced, with notable improvements in customer and supplier relationships, employee engagement, M&A decisions, and other strategic activities. For senior management, shifting to identity-based management has often seemed as if the keel of their ship had been discovered. And for all stakeholders, there was a new clarity about what the organization was, what it was naturally driven to achieve, and how each fit into that reality.
Implementation concerns
For many executives, identity-based management had face validity; it simply made sense. But implementing and sustaining it is not easy nor without pitfalls.
Even with the best of intentions, there have been implementation failures. Some executive teams were skeptical about the wisdom of identity-based strategy. At times, personal agendas got in the way of serving the larger institution. For some, concerns about the perceived
costs of disrupting the status quo outweighed its prospective benefits. In other situations, the new insights born of identity challenged entrenched conventional wisdom and fell on deaf ears.
In hindsight, what was missing was a complete management system that would provide executives with a clear picture, at all times, of where action and resources were required to sustain value creation, and a clear understanding of the implications of those actions.
Today, revelations made clear through an identity-informed organizational model reveal the ‘hydraulics’ of identity-based management. The model provides, for the first time, the high-level blueprint executives need to actually manage their organizations in a coherent identity-aware manner, thereby sustaining their organization’s value-creating power over time.