It is rather difficult to genuinely identify with an organization in its totality prior to the Stage-4community-centredMode.
Holding any senior post in Stage-4, especially being CEO, leads you to experience your own success and that of the organization as one and the same.
Cf.
Power-centred CEOs who view their organization as a fiefdom to be exploited; &
Cause-centred CEOs who remain too partial to their own specialist background.
Once you reach Stage-4, you are soon catapulted around into the market-centred zone again. But with all that development under your belt, you can function further down the ellipse. Your focus spontaneously moves from:
performance of your job ↓ performance of the organization.
Your career self-image changes from:
doing a job surrounded by others doing their jobs ↓ handling an organization surrounded by other organizations.
The challenge for you is contributing significantly to, or leading, development of effective and profitable strategies for the organization. At this Stage, your abilities must include harnessing the skills of senior and middle managers, as well as input (as appropriate) from the Board and any external advisors.
Nothing substantial in society can be achieved by one person acting alone—an organization containing diverse individuals is always necessary. So all later Stages—kinship-, perspective- and reality-centred—are concerned with how to expedite and strengthen the 3 “C”s:
●Collaboration ●Consensus ●Cooperation
within and around your top management group.
These inter-personal capabilities come to the fore in the Community-centredStage and remain at the heart of the capacity of any group to achieve. However, the quality of that achievement depends on the three Modes yet to come:
Kinship-centred principles will be needed to create unshakeable trust and loyalty in a Core Group.
Perspective-centred principles will be needed so new ideas can make a difference.
Reality-centred principles will be needed to add a capacity to cut through complexity and uncertainty with a master-stroke.
In contrast to the personal demands of Cycle-1, these next Modes of Cycle-2 reflect entry into an impersonal dimension.
At first, a good deal was little more than the best available, but this is no longer the case. A «good deal» is now about recognizing the transactional nature of life—a basic fairness is required and everyone must gain something from a deal.
Also, because you have an organization to protect, you cannot completely crush your counter-parties. Word will get around and you may find that you and your company are avoided or ostracised. Partnerships and alliances could become difficult to develop.