The writer speaks on the importance of brinkmanship and innovation
I find it appalling how management has taken it for granted that everybody lies on their resume. This tacit acceptance is as bad as condoning murder. The unintended consequence of this absence of faith in the resume has resulted in the CEO second guessing everything that the leadership team does in their respective functions and domains.
I have seen this angst leading to frustration in the entire team, including the CEO who is looking for results yesterday. Let us say, the day he hires a Product Manager is the day the countdown has begun for the product to hit the market!
Is that unreasonable? Yes and no. Yes, because every product takes time to be built. Can go-to-market cycles be shortened? Yes, but not by cutting corners. For instance, in the olden days, when you built a house, the curing process took three months. Moreover, if you reduced this period, there was a threat of your house collapsing like a pack of cards!
However, today, the curing process has reduced its required time by half, simply by developing materials that aid this process.
Therefore, the CEO is not unreasonable after all. He does not want to hear two things: one that it is not possible to reduce timelines that Rome was not built in a day! Two, that the CEO has to wait for the result in due course!
As domain experts, it is their responsibility to live and breathe innovation so that product development cost can be reduced. Imagine how you can turn the tables on your CEO just by a sheer act of brinkmanship!
Suppose you were to tell your CEO: I cannot get the product ready in 3 months. All fangs are out now. You listen to the tirade and smugly say, I still maintain we cannot do it in 3 months. However, we can do it in 45 days!
Your CEO stops short of asking you, what you have been smoking! And at that point you tell him, no I’m not asking for more people, but I have discovered a tool which will significantly reduce the time!
No CEO, however realistic it is, wants to hear that he should have patience and wait for tomorrow. My boss used to famously say there is no tomorrow without today. And if today you are clueless about brinkmanship, chances are you will be equally clueless about sanctity of deadlines.
It is not the CEO’s responsibility to encourage you to demonstrate your expertise. Remember, he hired you, in the first place. That is demonstration of his faith in your resume. It is now up to you to justify to him how your resume is not a string of cosmetic lies but factual.
I find it strange that organisations set aside teams, budgets and timelines for innovation. I believe it should be woven into the fabric of the organisation; it should be as natural as breathing in and breathing out.
Not laboured on a ventilator. I come back to what I started with, that I am appalled that everyone in the corporate world has accepted that everybody lies on the resume. It means the organisation itself is built on a foundation of lies! It means the organisation sold a bunch of lies to its customer. And it means the brand promise is just another good- looking lie!
Whose responsibility is it now to be the broom that sweeps clean.
