Twenty questions I ask myself

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Of course, I don’t have the answers to these questions (why should I?), but I think a lot about #19

Next Post 27 May

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473Hilarious slide-deck Vineet!;-) Awesome questions, indeed. I will spread the word. @ Q#19: for last 11 months I am working with people who want to work and collaborate together. no CEO, no job titles, no positions at all. Just passionate driven committed and creative folks, who want to leave a mark in this world. I had the guts to leave corporate world, but many of my talented friends did not conquer that fear and are literally suffering and killing their spirit in organizations, which cannot tap their potential, where they have to comply with , as you said "thousand years old structure". I am doing my best to inspire as many people as possible to speak up and start a movement of change. ;-) I could go on and on, on this topic, but instead of crying how nonfunctional it is , I "ship" my art;-) Have a super cool day, cheers from Slovakia i.
Posted by Ivana Sendecka on 2010-05-27 00:57:17 1\n

474Hello sir, Its really rare to see the person of your stature to ask such uncomfortable questions to oneself.This proves that transformation has already begun. About Q#19, Isn't it true that Human beings always look upto someone (with experience) for guidance. what i wished is...... How can a low level employee spending 8-9 hours on his seat be made to see a bigger picture.. as to how his daily work & meeting deadlines helps the company to move forward one step..How can the head show his team this bigger picture...?? Regards, Ajay Sharma
Posted by Ajay Sharma on 2010-05-28 03:29:21 1\n

475I also posted this comment over at MiX, but thought you might have a better chance of seeing it here. My thoughts on the solution to #19 (and 16 and 20) are posted on MiX here: The Bossless Organization: From Bosses to Mentor Investors http://managementexchange.com/content-46 (including the attached pdf of charts) HCL could be the ideal organization to experiment with alternatives to command-and-control hierarchy. I'd love to discuss it with you in more detail if you have an interest: tgattis (at) openteams.com Deepest thanks for your time and consideration, -Tory
Posted by Tory Gattis on 2010-05-29 06:54:07 1\n

476Dear Vineet, I admire you a lot. In you I see a smart CEO(still needed) who speak frankly thy mind and streching the learning horizon to make innovative decisions. By opening and being collaborative you make decision making job easier as option are on the table by the various responses you get. I am curious to answer all of you question though I do not possess the stature to answer those. Restricting myself to #19. Here are my thoughts, IMHO the question #19 is a bit tricky because of insights I read before the Question no.1. Following are at scenarios I came up with, 0. I feel other question that have been raised give me a indication that an organisation needs a CEO. 1.Financial sense is the essence of any business activity. If things were to go wrong I believe people at highest financial risk would intiate corrective action. For people who are the value creator are not at the top of risk pyramid. Hence if there were no CEO risk mitigation would be a difficult task and can prove costly. However we could think of american form of governance or indian/british form of governance. Where executive business overseeing board could greatly ensure decision making. But this does have the risk of clash of interest and deadlocks that can affect business. 2. If a company were to be process oriented to core thereby reducing human intervention for decision making there is a kind of possiblity that the role of CEO possibly die. In current businesses I believe are run the way clients wants it. and so rigidity is a monster people do not like. Many People and organisation around the world are inflexible but would want say organisation like yours to be flexible. Hence role of CEO crisscrosses with decision making on several of the concerns these organisation want a CEO to address. And no other organisation role would suffice. 3. As long as there are other CEO's in the world the role of a CEO is mandatory,because protocol wise or phsycologically a president talks to a president /prime minister or vice versa, similarly a CEO feels comfortable doing business with a CEO. Otherwise from the customer perspective they could perceive multiple power centers in a organisation. 4. If there were no CEO at least there would be the need for value creators who are CEO material. Otherwise business is at risk. 5. I feel by either by birth or by experience I feel CEO need to be highly self motivated which is a quality in which they depend on themselves that others and have a strong conviction to get things done with best financial sense at top of their mind. I also have thinking that by experience CEO become split second decision makers. I doubt whether collective intelligence of few value creator can improve the decision making process of an organisation. Because value creator are good at putting options on the table and CEO has the financial sense to take the decison for corporate growth. Being a CEO please take control and reject what I have said above. Thanks, RK
Posted by R K Davey on 2010-05-29 08:21:23 1\n

477It is very encouraging to see that all of you too think along these lines and question status quo in organizational hierarchy. @Ivana I too often wonder about how far the concept can be stretched. Would we really be able to achieve enhanced efficiencies with no job titles at all? @Ajay No CEO does not imply that there will be no experienced people to guide and support the value creators. On the contrary more people will take responsibility for it @Tory ‘From Bosses to Mentor Investors’ raises some very interesting points @RK While we must not succumb to protocol or psychological pressure while catalyzing change but, as you rightly mention, when we consider the possibility of an organization without a CEO, we cannot overlook the responsibilities such as risk mitigation.
Posted by Vineet Nayar on 2010-06-01 23:00:42 1\n

478Wonderful presentation. I think the question that caught my attention the highest #Q13 and that is a reflection of how i am learning the ropes as a leader. Back to slide #19: We have seen it work in NGOs of a particular scale. However, addressing scale is the major challenges. One of the few organizations that has addressed this issue is GCMMF - AMUL. I believe that their model should be the starting point to build a powerful employee empowering organization (with or without a CEO!)
Posted by Kalyan on 2010-06-09 05:01:29 1\n

479Sir, I think it can work ,provided the employees you recruit love to work for the company and for themselves.
Posted by Anoop on 2010-06-11 22:10:53 1\n

481Sir, I am not that good enough to comment by on your thoughts...but while reading those slides, something made me to compare the structure of a company with Indian politics... to answer your question, i would give you an example... what if India says that it has got no prime minister and president to rule the nation....it will act according to his state level authorities.....???? what will be the future of India.....? i hope you would get the answer from here.... To my knowledge, a nation and a company drives on the same path.... each and every part of the company is been handled by a respective person...and if there is no one to over see what is happening within the company then you can significantly see the drop off from the raising ladder of the company.... the same way it goes to the nation...just wanted to share this information with my very busy schedules...thought i could share my views. if there is some thing wrong i apologize for that... regards, Naveen Raj
Posted by Naveen Raj on 2010-06-22 10:21:54 1\n

1469Thank you for another essential article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a complete way of writing?Best regards from France.
Posted by Pieczątka on 2011-11-15 22:15:32 1\n

Twenty questions I ask myself

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