Guest Blog Wally Bock
In over your head
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Here's the situation. You've worked for your company for years but no one ever tapped you as a "high potential." You don't have an MBA, in fact your degree is in English. And it's not from one of those resume-making schools either. You've been tapped to lead your company.
It's probably a last resort, a kind of Hail Mary choice. Your company is in big trouble. It's been losing money for years, is overloaded with debt, and hemorrhaging cash. Your stock has dropped 90 percent. And, just for fun, the government is investigating one of your operations.
Scary, huh? What would you do? There are three choices.
You can ask for a do-over, plead buyer's remorse and head for the exit.
You can shake your fist at the sky, heap ashes on your head and begin planning the company funeral.
Or, you can get on with it.
That's what Ann Mulcahy did. She faced that exact situation at Xerox and chose the third option.
You can bet she was scared. That's one of those situations where if you're not scared you don't really understand the situation. But being scared doesn't feed the bulldog.
Mulcahy knew a lot about Xerox and its culture. But she didn't know many of things she needed to know to do the job. So she set about learning. She dealt with the daily crises that came her way and got down to the business of learning what she needed to know to succeed. In the book Mindset, Carol Dweck describes it this way:
"She went into an incredible learning mode, making herself into the CEO Xerox needed to survive"
When you're in over your head, that's what you have to do. Along with everything else, go into learning mode to make yourself into the leader that's needed.
Boss's Bottom Line
You don't have to know it all, which is a good thing, because you won't. But you do have to learn fast.
Wally Bock is author of the Three Star Leadership Blog
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