The Next CEO

A successful businessman was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said: “It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you”.

The young executives were shocked.

The boss continued “I am going to give each one of you a seed today-one very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring and the one I choose will be the next CEO.”

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like, the others, received a seed. 

He went home and excitedly told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.

By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn’t have a plant and he felt like a failure. Six months went by-still nothing in Jim’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn’t say anything to his colleagues, however. He just kept watering and fertilising the soil. He so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.

Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach; it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life. But he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful-in shape and sizes.

Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed. A few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives. Jim just tried to hide in the back.

“My! What great plants, trees and flowers you have grown!” said the CEO. “Today, one of you will be appointed the next CEO!”

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front.

Jim was terrified.

He thought “The CEO knows I am a failure! Maybe, he will have me fired!”

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed. Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim and then announced to the young executives, “Behold your next Chief Executive Officer! His name is Jim!”

Jim couldn’t believe it. Jim couldn’t even grow his seed.

“How could he be the new CEO?” the others asked.

Then the CEO said, “One year today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead! It was not possible for them to grow. All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers.

“When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!”

Lessons

-Honesty is the best policy

-You reap what you sow

-Share your problems with people

-What is yours is yours; nobody can take it away from you

-Do not be desperate about position; wait for your time

Regards

Timawus I.

Six Steps to Building a Great Team

"Adapted from The 17 Indisputable Laws of Team Work" By John C. Maxwell
　
Are you desirous of building a formidable team where members don't jockey for positions but work as a united force? If yes! Then, the following steps should interest you:　
　
1. Look Up at the Big Picture
　Everything starts with the vision. It is the responsibility of leaders to effectively communicate the vision and make their teams see the big picture. Great leaders in history from Winston Churchill to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used effective communication to galvanize their people to success. People get more committed when they see what they are working toward.
　
2. Size Up the Situation
　Seeing the big picture makes our vision clearer and it reveals how far we really are from achieving it. A lone ranger gets intimidated when he sees the gulf between what is and what could be. But a team builder gets motivated, stays focused and works towards setting up a dream team that sees the big picture.
　
3. Line Up Needed Resources
　A team builder should be able to quantify the resources needed to achieve success. In the words of John Maxwell, "the better resourced the team is, the fewer distractions the players will have as they try to achieve their goal".
　
4. Call Up the Right Players
　The key to raising a successful team lies in the quality of players at your disposal. Your distinct vision, a precise plan, plenty of resources, and incredible leadership will take you nowhere if you have the wrong players in your team.
　
5. Give Up Personal Agendas
We must focus on building an egalitarian team where the goal is more important than the role. As Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's aptly put it "no one of us is more important than the rest of us".
　
6. Step Up to a Higher Level
　We achieve something greater than ourselves when we put away our personal agendas, focus and see our team as a boundless entity.

To build a great team, we must effectively communicate the big picture to our teams as leaders; and genuinely align ourselves to our teams' goal as members.

Regards
Timawus I.

The Beauty of Sharing Ideas

In 1928, a British scientist named Sir Alexander Fleming made an interesting discovery, while he was working in the laboratory.

Fleming discovered that a fungus which he cultured inside a petri dish killed all bacteria around it. He was puzzled.

　

He announced his finding to his colleagues, who were equally baffled with this interesting discovery. After carrying out series of experiments, they arrived at the conclusion that Fleming had discovered the world’s first anti-biotic!

　

The scientists succeeded in isolating the micro-organism, which had the ability to exterminate bacteria. They called the new ‘wonder’ micro-organism Penicillium notatum.　 It was from this micro-organism that they eventually synthesized penicillin, an anti-biotic.　　　

　

Penicillin was used extensively during the Second World War that occurred between 1939 and 1945, to save lives of wounded soldiers, who would have died from even simple infections.　 It is still the first choice anti-biotic in fighting infections due to its broad-spectrum activity against other fungi, bacteria and viruses.

　

If Fleming had kept his discovery to himself just to get all the credit, he might not have been able to unravel the mystery. Team work helped to shed more light into his finding and he ended up getting the glory as well.

　

Fleming’s case can be applied in a typical workplace setting. Even though people are assigned different tasks, there should be synergy among the staff to create the desired results for the organisation, which is more profitability and growth.

　

Since no man is an island of knowledge and ideas, sharing ideas in the office would help an organisation to move to greater heights.

　
　
　
Regards.
Timawus I.