Executive derailment is as much due to the pressure to produce as it is to individual personality traits.
Executive failures have received so much media attention in recent years that management gurus are scrambling to understand why executives fail. Unethical executives get the most press but there are countless performance failures that do not get much media coverage. It is not so much that there are poor quality executives but that people have much less patience with mediocre performance these days. Anyone currently in a senior executive position needs to produce results fast or face a quick exit.
Six Factors Contributing to Executive Derailment
1. Having strengths that are so strong they become liabilities
2. Intolerance of others, being overly aggressive, unwillingness to listen and poor communication skills
3. Inability to adapt to changing requirements
4. An overly narrow background and focus
5. Lack of strategic thinking skills
6. Inability to resolve conflict and foster win-win solutions
These pit is apparent that there are some cultural factors at work too. The very need to produce results quickly puts such pressure on executives that many are driven to be more ruthless than they might be otherwise. The need for immediate results generates a sense of urgency that can lead to people getting trampled.
Business is a very competitive arena, much like sports. Organizations need to be highly competitive to survive, more so since the Japanese became successful in North America starting in the 1970's. Also, within organizations, there is fierce competition for advancement. These factors encourage and reward aspiring executives who have a ruthless, win-lose, aggressive streak. Those who push hard, without doing too much damage, can rise quickly through the executive ranks.
Because such behavior gets rewarded, successful high fliers become even more entrenched in their ways, more certain they are right and less tolerant of others who they see as competitors and enemies. It is easier to get away with behaving badly at lower levels because the results such individuals achieve are more visible higher up than how they behaved to get their numbers. When you think you are right, it is natural to feel that you shouldn't have to change, that you are onto a winning formula. When the behavior of such individuals is criticized, they switch into defensive mode. They don't see how their methods can be wrong so they blame others and regard their critics as enemies who are out to get them. This defensive attitude can make them resistant to feedback and coaching. It is only when such executives get to the higher echelons of the organization that their negative traits become more visible in the executive suite. By that time it is often too late. Too much damage has been done and the individual has become too inflexible to change.
There are no easy solutions to this problem. It is certainly not enough to focus only on individuals. Organizational cultures need to change as well. This is not easy because they do need to be competitive to succeed and they need executives who have a compelling need to win, almost at all costs. The key is to create a better balance. It is not a matter of erasing competitiveness but to reward cooperative behaviors as well. It is important to reward HOW people achieve results, not just focus on the numbers. This requires organizations to look at the long term effort required to nurture the right executive mindset, not easy in a hyper-competitive world where business success is so geared toward today's numbers. Here again, however, a balance needs to be struck between short and long term imperatives.
In conclusion, executive derailment has been building up for too long to be eliminated overnight. Executives need to be groomed individually over their entire careers to behave in accordance with the organizational competency profile but there are cultural factors that need to be better balanced as well.
