TIGblogs - Allan Cox

Been to a Starbucks lately? Have you noticed those brief quotes on their cups that are meant to be thought-starters to customers who’ll crank up the old coffee house type of buzz and energy? Well, Starbucks let me know recently that they’ve lifted a short passage from my book, Your Inner CEO, that they’re going to put on their cups sometime later this year. Here it is:

By the time executives get married, take on a mortgage, raise kids, cope with the crabgrass, climb the corporate ladder, do their best to manage career pressures, build their net worth and get into their 40s, they’ve lost touch with what they believe in and care about most deeply.

This downward drift up the corporate ladder is a puzzling fact, and I’m sure you don’t want this to happen to you in your work and life. Hold that thought while we move on from this puzzling fact to a riddle . . .

Do you know what makes the person special who hires people better than she is?

Because, most often, unlike she, they don’t!

It’s the hidden quality implicit in her action that outweighs their and her literal competencies.

Do you find this puzzling fact and riddle thought-provoking? Do you care why the woman in the riddle excels and others derail, even though early in the game they show exceptional promise? If you don’t, read no further.

Your Inner CEO Community

In “Your Inner CEO Community” your legitimate ambitions can be that you find energy and acquire wisdom by thinking and discussing such puzzles and riddles. That it can be a place where you not only are exhilarated by what you learn, take away and apply, but others who are here, too, also feel that way because of what you give by your gaining leverage in your work and life. By making yourself part of the gathering in this way, what you send out comes back to you. And so it is with your colleagues as well.

Your Inner CEO Community is an engagement. We’re here to tussle things through, thoroughly, together, climbing steadily, surely. The book, Your Inner CEO, is the guide to our conversations, projects, and thought experiments. Leaning on it, we share inquiries, successes, failures and suggestions with each other. Our tagline is Leadership from the core.

The Risk is the Downside

We start there. A handful of others before you have framed out a prototype of thought exercises based on their reading the book. Come see what these early travelers have drafted in the “Exercises” and “Archives” rooms right off our Lobby. Try your hand at an idea yourself. Sketch something out. If you feel like it, let us know what you’ve ventured. Or take issue with what you see there. If you’d rather hold your fire for awhile, that’s fine, too.

Where do we go from there in this new venture? Who knows? We have the tools onsite—Ning and Wiki, making more high impact insights available to more people. What can you learn and apply that people can emulate just by watching you?

Are you in, an early adoptor? Yes? What’s the risk? The real risk is saying No. That’s the downside. But the other side . . . well, the other side is the upside, your journey to the summit of your personal Everest.

I’ll be active, ascending right alongside you.

All the best,

Allan

Start right here: Your Inner CEO and click on “YIC Community”