Dear CEO, I do not care for your vision!
The small IT products and professional services company was growing pretty fast and added a lot of new faces .They were all welcomed at the town hall meeting. The young and hardworking CEO was quite delighted to see so many new additions to the team and as always took time to explain the humble beginnings of the organization, vision, mission, strategy, areas of specialization, expectations from both sides and so on. For the Q&A session employees were asked to write questions regarding the vision and the growth of the company on a piece of paper and drop it in the drop box. To encourage more people to ask questions they were told to leave their name, team name blank. A few random slips were being read and the CEO was passionately answering all the questions. The next slip of paper, an anonymous one, had a different question all together. It went something like this. “Dear CEO, I do not care for your vision or mission. My only vision, mission is to make money. If you give good hikes I will stay else I will find another employer”.
The CEO was taken aback. There were roars of laughter from the employees .Gathering himself and his thought back, the CEO took a few minutes to explain why it is not always money when it comes to a career, finding a growing organization with a right culture, opportunities to grow and lead, good work and high-end technology, mentors and good leadership are more important. Not many were buying the story. They were the usual cribbers in the back rows, the skeptics and the disengaged employees.
It did not take long for some of the smart kids to figure out who would have written such a question. They were all giving him high fives and made him an overnight superstar at the organization.Years passed by everyone moved on. We came across some of those back benchers many years later.They were still complaining, cribbing about their bosses, organization, policies, hikes etc. As compared to the careers of their peers they were quite behind, some dropped out. We also did come across the famous boy whose only mission was to make money. He hopped quite a few organizations and grew fast and after that he got stuck and now there seems to be no takers and no high fives.
Good one Joy! Yes the CEOs journey is always lonely at the top and sometimes its only a few takers for the vision and mission of the organization. However, the challenge for the organization and especially the visionary CEO is to always be able to sell the vision and onboard as many as he can to sign up for that greater vision.
Professional coach, Director & Learning & OD Head at Aragen Life Sciences
4 年Good one Joy! It’s always easy to blame but difficult to take responsibility
Founder | Technical Director | Professional Consulting | Start-Up Mentor | Speaker
4 年That's a good one Joy... I would like add here a realtime recent incident we had, here are a group who were flooding Linkedin for a Job Request with Just Completed Graduation and Internships, asking for a Fulltime, when Offered were not not ready without considering the Offer they got, in tough current situations, because they don't care what The Company Offering is a Career, but only looking at what Money it is Offering. Adding the Toppings for rejection, they say Didn't Get the Parent's Approvals. My Point here is Take Up the Career for Now You will Get Your Need soon.
Business Head - India @ BCforward | Staffing, Business Development
4 年Great
Tech, people, strategy, growth
4 年Very well written and unfortunately viewer truth