When it comes to people and organizational development, from the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on down, C-level executives are relatively poor performers.
Rajinder "Raj" Gupta, adjunct professor and executive director of the CEO Perspective Program at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, has interviewed more than a dozen CEOs from companies including Walgreen's, AON and Northern Trust about competencies data. "In general, I found that the premium for CEOs, as they rise through the ranks, is a deep understanding of the business and customers, not necessarily on how they manage their people. The CEOs I spoke with are definitely aware of the need to focus more of their attention on people development," says Gupta.
According to Gupta, CEOs want strategic-minded C-level executives. For example, the biggest deficits CEOs see in the current crop of information technology (IT) chiefs are the lack of a deep understanding of business opportunities and the inability to communicate strategically with high-level internal and external stakeholders. "In industries where business is closely entwined with technology, or where it can be used as a competitive advantage, that's where CEOs are looking for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) with high executive quotients (EQ)," says Reynold Lewke, Egon Zehnder's North American CIO practice leader.
Talent assessment and recruitment firm Egon Zehnder International assessed 25,000 executives on C-level competencies. Outstanding CIOs perform significantly better than average CIOs in all competencies except for people and organizational development, which is relatively low for all types of executives assessed. Outstanding CEOs perform significantly better than outstanding CIOs only in market knowledge and external customer focus.
Do you know your executive quotient (EQ)?
By figuring your EQ, you can determine how well you're positioned to be the strategy-oriented executive that businesses are demanding. A simplified public version of the self-assessment tool is available at: www.cioexecutivecouncil.com/futurestatecio
Source: The Secrets of C-Suite Success, www.cio.com July 1, 2007