Greg and I have know each other since the early days of On-Purpose®. My guess is we go back to around 1994 when he attended a 3-day On-Purpose training I did in San Diego. We’ve stayed in touch so it was really fun to do this interview about Chief Leadership Officer because Greg gets it.
Daring to Ask: What Gives with DEI in the Workplace?
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is proven to be a divisive and dangerous dogma. Giving the benefit of the doubt to DEI advocates, these corporate policies and programs may have started with honorable intentions to right wrongs, but they are devolving into insidious administrative weapons of mass derision, exclusion, and intolerance. What DEI espouses to remedy for one people group it creates for another group. The ironic consequences are less diversity, equity, and inclusion coupled with rising chastisement and tension. These are not the marks of good policy.
I propose DEI be replaced by DEI 2.0: Dignity, Equality, Integrity:
- Dignity is worth and respect for one’s self and others.
- Equality is the state of being equals in status, rights, and opportunity.
- Integrity is one’s strong conduct adhering to moral principles.
DEI 2.0 is based on the premise that values can be legislated but not readily adjudicated. Rather, they can be taught, caught, and lived in the inspiring context and challenge to become a better person today than yesterday — the essence of personal leadership development. DEI 2.0 realistically acknowledges our aspirations, failures, and lessons that refine us. It reminds to utilize The Golden Rule to seek reconciliation, offer appreciation, and extend love and forgiveness. Putting aside pride is a tough shift.
What Can You Do to Advance DEI 2.0: Dignity, Equality, and Integrity?
- Read the definition of each word in DEI 2.0. Dig into your online dictionary to discover the nuances of each word and reflect on where you fail and succeed in your life.
- Read The Prayer Attributed to St. Francis for the next 3 days or longer (see the graphic). Let it soak into your being. How might it right relationships at home, at work, or with those of differing political parties?
- Review your 2-word purpose. Purpose precedes values in order of impact and importance. Your 2-word purpose is your personal point to take rest and reflection. It is the unique expression of your unfathomable spiritual purity and deepest connection to God, Self, and Others. When you feel undignified, unequal, or disintegrated, return to your purpose for healing, restoration, and recharge.
- Recast DEI into the positives of DEI 2.0 of Dignity, Equality, and Integrity. Regardless of whether you are the company CEO, team leader, or head of a household, instilling these values will do far more to advance the human condition and common wealth than the current DEI terms.
- See and treat others through the lens of them having a purpose. The color of their skin, gender, orientation, ethnicity, religion, or whatever identifier they were born with or choose to use to brand themselves are distant seconds to their God-gifted purpose.
We all long for a reason for being, significance, belonging, and making a difference. DEI policies thrust labels upon us and push us into camps regardless of whether we like it or not, whereas the values of DEI 2.0 — Dignity, Equality, and Integrity — are foundational values that focus on our commonalities to unite us into one.
Be On-Purpose!
Kevin
Daring to Ask: Why Are MBAs Increasingly Incomplete?
This is the third in a series of four “Daring to Ask” posts related to the state of business, capitalism, and CEO leadership (or lack thereof).
- Post 1: Daring to Ask: Why Are People NOT a CEO’s Greatest Asset?
- Post 2: Daring to Ask: What Is the Purpose of Business
The answer to the title question for this post is the fourth word of this graduate degree: Masters of Business Administration. Why aren’t B-schools producing Masters of Business Leadership? An MBL is in sync with the needs of today and for tomorrow.
Leadership contains administration, whereas administration does not include leadership.Yet this month, B-schools are graduating hordes of freshly minted MBAs who are ill-prepared to lead because their education is incomplete. Their deans and faculty, who fiercely champion innovation and design thinking, are guilty of perpetuating an educational ecosystem mired in a dehumanizing Industrial Age philosophy based on the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor (see Daring to Ask: Why Are People NOT a CEO’s Greatest Asset?).
Unfortunately, graduating MBAs who enter the workforce look to CEOs as their role models.Their indoctrination into the heartless rule of management science continues. For all the good the CEO system of management created, its narrow definition of success as financial returns is corrupting far too many souls occupying or aspiring to be in the C-suites of Corporate America with a “get mine” attitude of avarice. Worse, these same managers use public relations ploys like Environment, Sustainability, and Governance (ESG) to hide or self-deceive their personal agendas of greed. They say one thing in public, but act another way behind closed doors. These elitist managerial mindsets and actions are efficiently and effectively perverting the high and noble purpose of business and depressing our standards of living as they enrich themselves.
The dictionary in Apple products reveals a fascinating historical whitewashing of the word management (see screenshot). Management is an archaic word for “trickery; deceit.” Could it be that in the early years of the Industrial Revolution when labor and ownership were embattled that workers referred to their manipulative bosses as “management” as an insulting pejorative? Over the decades, the term stuck and gained “respectability” for those charged with “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people.” Today, managers control as executives execute at an even higher level of trickery and deceit.Would you sooner be controlled and executed or led and inspired? Chief Leadership Officer: Increasing Wealth so Everyone Profits makes the case for a corner office business reform. Since the release of the book, however, I’ve learned most CEOs are too busy and too wed to their business traditions and are unlikely to rise to becoming CLOs. The majority of academics are risk-averse theorists subject to backward-looking peer review publishing pressure to earn their tenure or remain comfortable in their chairs. We can’t count on them to step up and revise their curriculum and rename their degrees.
I’m daring the MBA Class of 2024 to reframe their degrees and mindsets to become and behave as MBLs and CLOs. Your elders are failing you. Forge your leadership mettle and reverse the decline of our business ethics and society. The future is yours. There is a better way!
Let the Business Reformation Begin!
Kevin
Tip: Know a graduating MBA? Gift them Chief Leadership Officer:
Print Version • Audio
Daring to Ask: What Is the Purpose of Business?
The purpose of business is NOT to make money. Yet, ask the average adult about the purpose of business, and experience tells me over half of them will incorrectly answer, “To make money.” Within the sciences of economics and accounting, financial profit remains a measure of performance, but not the purpose of business. Purpose precedes profit; otherwise, corruption of souls will soon follow.
Business first exists as a societal construct to serve the common good, not the greater good. Think of the common good as enlarging a pie so more get to eat versus taking more of a set sized pie. Those invoking the “greater good” are invariably tyrants advancing their agenda at the expense of others.
Business exists in the private sector. Therefore, by definition, business has no standing in socialism or communism whereby a central agency controls the production and distribution of goods, aka the greater good approach.
Capitalism remains the only system of economics repeatedly shown to benefit the common good. Thanks to the competitive nature of capitalism, quality improves, speed of delivery increases, prices are lowered, and options increase. These value-adding benefits raise the societal standard of living. The promise of prosperity by capitalism, however, relies on a moral and just people — the flaw in the system.
Unfortunately, the CEO-system of management that served the world so well for most of the 20th century is increasingly corrupted because of the decay in our judicial, political, social, and spiritual mores. The ugliness of greed, lust, and ego are increasingly unchecked and even celebrated with pagan ritual. Making money is the golden calf of our day. “Human Resources” are too readily sacrificed on the altar of “it’s just business” as “I get what’s mine.”
Chief Leadership Officer, my iconoclastic manifesto written as an easy-reading narrative, invites a much needed business reformation where people are no longer treated as assets and human capital. Instead, readers and leaders of businesses are invited to embrace their charge to be creators and increasers of wealth.
Wealth is the state of weal — a largely forgotten word that translates best to our modern ears as wellbeing. So wealth is a concept grounded in the whole person and the whole society. Business is therefore a group of people inspired by a common purpose to serve the common good in such a way that everyone profits. This is an economic understanding of, “All ships rise with an incoming tide” versus a zero-sum game.
Are you a business owner who is unsure what the purpose is for your team? Borrow “Increasing Wealth.” This generalized 2-word purpose sets a proper tone and direction until a company-specific purpose is determined.
There’s no need to reject the CEO methods. Rather, the CLO-system of leadership elevates and rehabilitates it so you’re no longer doing business incompletely right. Do you dare reconsider what is the purpose of business and make the change? I pray you do.
Let the Business Reformation Begin!
Kevin
Daring to Ask: Why Are People NOT a CEO’s Greatest Asset?
The underlying premise of the Chief Leadership Officer book is the CEO system of business management is increasingly obsolete and toxic to people and society. Unfortunately, the deficient CEO mindset and methods dominate the business landscape with a corrupting impact on the purity of capitalism to improve the world. Worse, the societal response is to turn to the government to regulate private sector activities with an eroding effect on all our freedoms. Can you say socialism?
How did it come to this? If you’ve read The On-Purpose Business Person (1988), you may recall “The Old Man” is Fred Taylor and he dies. I chose this name because of Frederick Winslow Taylor, author of The Principles of Scientific Management (1911),akaTaylorism. Taylor is best known for doing time-motion studies of factory workers at Middle Steel Works.
He, however, achieved far more than that in business and life. He is the father of industrial engineering, management consulting, and training. Taylor was an accomplished golfer and champion tennis player. To his credit, his ways sped up the Industrial Age and ensuing growth and prosperity of the United States.
For all the good Taylor did, he also sowed foul seeds of what we are reaping today in Corporate America and society. Namely, the dehumanization of people in the pursuit of productivity in the holy name of shareholder profits and C-suite compensation.
In his time, Taylor’s “scientific method” and relationship were central to the founding of the first three U.S. graduate business schools: Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, and The Harvard Business School. Taylor’s planning and patterns are baked into the curriculum DNA of our business schools and MBA programs. He set the stage for the 1950s’ emergence of the role of a Chief Executive Officer to myopically preside over business results out of context from societal impact.
Despite his management genius, in his book he openly debases personally and vocationally certain classes of people. Because Taylor equates people to units of production — not unlike assets to be bought and sold like iron or coal or slaves (slavery was abolished when Taylor was nine years old) — companies today still use the pejorative term “Human Resources.”
Sadly, we business people have lost our way. Since the 1950s, generations have grown up only in the CEO system. When writing The On-Purpose Business Person, I foresaw the need to kill off Fred Taylor’s twisted view of people as assets and to replace it with the moral imperative of human dignity codified in the U.S. Constitution.
Assets such as machines, equipment, livestock, and raw materials have a physical purpose. People, however, have a spiritual purpose. Taylor erroneously equated the two as equal and set in motion over a century of human objectification resulting in management-labor unrest and workaholism tied to an identity crisis as adults mistakenly see their work as their source of meaning. When “I owe my soul to the company store,” is it any wonder an epidemic of anxiety persists?
Taylorism is alive and well today. When you hear a CEO say, “People are our greatest asset,” or you hear team members referred to as “human capital” or an entire department called “Human Resources,” the management team and company by design or by default are invested in a systematic sacrifice of souls at the altar of the corporation.
Doubt me? Ask John Henry. Why do you think that song of the working man was so popular?
Chief Leadership Officers (CLOs) treat people as people, period.They are stewardship-leaders who integrate the best business and operational practices with human dignity to be increasing wealth so everyone profits. In the coming weeks, you’ll learn more about making the CEO-to-CLO transition. I dare you to keep reading.
Let the Business Reformation Begin!
Kevin
CLO Podcast with Greg Voisen of Insider Personal Growth, March 2024
Below is a screenshot of this interview and link to the video. Click here or on the image below to hear or watch. Scroll further down to see an excerpt from the interview about why CLOs instead of CEOs.
Greg and I first met in the mid-1990s when he was certified to facilitate The On-Purpose Program, a one-day program taking participants through the steps in The On-Purpose Person. We’ve been colleagues ever since.
Greg was podcasting before podcasting was popular. All the proceeds from his podcast go to his non-profit Compassionate Communications Foundation that works with the homeless and Ukrainian refugees. If you appreciate his efforts, please consider a donation.
Excerpt from the interview (lightly edited)
Greg Voisen: What inspired you are challenged, you challenged you to challenge the traditional CEO role, and propose the concept of what you’re referring to as the chief leadership officer? And how do you really define that? What do you define is the differences for somebody who’s a chief leadership officer versus a chief executive officer, where you crossed it out on the book?
Kevin W. McCarthy: What’s the difference? Most people, if you ask people that work in a company, would they sooner be executed or sooner be led because executives execute, and chief leadership officers lead. There’s a long sort of arc, if you will, in terms of some things that are going on that brought about this message. Part of this is because I’ve been such a pioneer in the purpose area, I recognize that, you know, if you go back 100 million that way, let’s say 1000 years ago, when people were more than that, actually what you get back 10s of 1000s of years, when people were hunter gatherers, the work of their hands was what they did, then they got a little smarter, and they learned how to, you know, corral some animals and plants and things and they become emerged from hunter gatherers to sort of an agrarian society. But still, it was the work of their hands. And then they got as a their minds began to free their hands up a little bit, we move into sort of fast forward into the Industrial Revolution, where we are now working with our hands today, most of us our hand activity is this. You were sitting in a keyboard. And so our minds the knowledge age, if you will.
So the logical thing is that the age beyond the knowledge age or the digital age, even the AI age is the heart. So we’ve gone from our hands to our heads to our hearts. And what’s happening is we’re in an era where meaning and purpose are today. I mean, when I started this work 34 years ago, nobody was talking about purposes, particularly as a heart issue. And so what’s happened is the idea of a CEO is the Industrial Revolution inventions there prior to 1950. There were no CEOs there were only presidents and CEOs were the idea of a group of companies coming together, led by each company is led by a president and the CEO was the person who was over these presidents or these divisions.
Of course, today, you have a guy driving around with an F 150 pickup truck and a bag of tools in his card says CEO. It’s kind of lost its meaning in that regard. But the fact is, is it’s a it’s a leftover from an industrial revolutionary mindset. As are words like human resources, which is a pejorative term that looks at people as resources rather than human beings. And so what’s happened is the CEO system of management has gradually dehumanized. And again, I’m not, I’m a pro business, love business, entrepreneur.
So I’m not bashing business. But what happens is the system of management has so dehumanized people that corporations are hard, having trouble hiring good people, retaining people, the sort of the chewing up and spitting up people is really a it’s a high price that people are paying. And so as a result, the idea is the difference between a CEO and a clo, is that CEOs are doing business, what I call incompletely right? Words, they’re looking at the numbers, they’re looking into profits, and I’m a profit guy. But profit is a byproduct of a system that is designed to produce the profits. However, that system relies upon purpose plan, its people, processes, performance measures, and all of these things that go in.
And as a result, if you take the people component, and you which is so vital to what’s going on, and you diminish them, you are diminishing your profits, you’re diminishing the effect of what you’re doing. So a clo does everything a CEO does, but understands where and understands the importance of the people component that we’ve got to take care of, we’ve got to do right by the people not take care of you got to do right by the people.
Fast Company Article: “Purpose is suddenly a superpower!”
And you already knew that!
In the wake of the pandemic and the protests, purpose is suddenly a superpower. This article in Fast Company magazine caught my eye. Let me amplify and clarify a few of the author’s statements.
The idea that “… companies that have purpose built into their bottom line are the most likely to remain standing,” is true. Current events have highlighted and, perhaps, hastened what is a long arc of CEO-run companies being out-of-sync with the times.
“Just think about how hard it is to know how to do the right thing when your organization isn’t designed to do the right thing.” Yes, I love this statement. Chapter 13 in Chief Leadership Officer, “The On-Purpose Statements (Deep Strategy),” makes this case — plus it shows you how to do it and the larger context of it on the CLO Integrity Map.
“And while everyone is paying more attention to purpose, we are seeing a very clear separation between the purposeful and the pretenders, between those that only offer lip service and those that serve their community well.” Amen! Because I’ve been pioneering purpose since the late 1980s, I’ve seen the spectrum of “the purposeful” and “the pretenders.” Purpose has become a hot buzzword so business leaders, authors, and speakers mindlessly pitch it for marketing and not for its meaning. That kind of behavior inspires me to work harder to get the On-Purpose® message into the lives of people and their organizations.
The author is writing about Amazon: “When the pandemic pumped the company full of demand, the already noticeable issues with its employee relations struggles became unavoidable. Why? Because it had to choose between pursuing maximum profits or standing on purpose and caring for its employees.” Ah, CLOs, this is so rich for us to look at our CEO colleagues and see why they’re so challenged.
First, they see people as “employees” and “human resources.” It’s a dispassionate view of people that objectifies in the name of profits and “doing business.”
Second, “pursuing maximum profit” is not a wealth creation strategy. It is a wealth destruction tactic used by short-term profiteers. In its wake lie the bodies of those folded, spindled, and mutilated at the altar of profit maximizer. CLOs know about the triple bottom line (page 98). It isn’t a choice between profit and people. It’s a decision to have the checks and balances of three bottom-line measures. Profit is the effect. Purpose is the cause. And people are the connector for the two.
Kudos to Heath Shackleford, the founder of Good.Must.Grow. Hopefully, he’ll realize soon that being “purpose-driven” is really no different from being profit-driven — you’re still being driven! People aren’t cattle to be driven. Rather they’re humans to be called to belong and contribute — to give high and noble expression to their purpose. People will answer this call that I simply call being on-purpose.
O. C. Tanner Global Culture Report 2020
This is a fascinating report that’s addressing the “southern” branch of the Chief Leadership Officer Integrity Map: the internal audience of culture and operations. I highly recommend you visit their site and read the free report.
In their 2019 report, they said, “Last year’s Global Culture Report identified six core elements of workplace culture that are crucial to an employee’s decision to join, engage with, and remain at any place of work. We call them Talent Magnets, because of their power to attract and connect people to their teams and organizations. They are shown here with their corresponding improvement over last year’s study.”
What struck me immediately and continues to be a source of frustration for me is the first magnet “Employee Sense of Purpose.” Thanks to ONPURPOSE.me, we no longer have to settle for a mere whiff or sense of purpose. We can actually know it, own it, build our lives on it, and improve upon it — all from finding a 2-word purpose.
Later in the report, the point is made that improving purpose and meaning in the organization can have very positive impact on two to three of the other magnets.
“Our previous research found that the Talent Magnets are statistically
interconnected. Improve one magnet, and there will be improvements
in the others. This makes logical sense. A meaningful purpose, for
example, creates a feeling of opportunity, which increases the chance
for success. It also positively impacts employees’ perceptions of
leadership, and helps them feel an elevated sense of appreciation
and well-being. So improvement in purpose alone can strengthen your
entire culture across the board. The same is true for every magnet.”
Preach it!
And to think, that’s just an update on the 2019 Global Culture Report!
A highlight of the O. C. Tanner current report is the concept that team members (they call them employees) define their “employee experience” as “micro-experiences” that have peaks and valleys. Fortunately, the peaks sustain four weeks while the valleys maintain for only two weeks. In short, people offer a certain degree of grace.
However, consider my take on this aspect of the report. If a team member experiences five valleys for every one peak, then the power and impact of the peak never rises to its potential. The difference between a great workplace and an average or bad one may very well come down to a concept as simple as the leaders understanding and appreciating the “peaks and valleys” model in their daily conversations and interactions.
CLOs, as great as this report is, it is still a report of existing companies. As a CLO you’ll read between the lines of the report and see that even the companies most progressive at rewards and recognition for creating culture are still doing business incompletely right. For all the contemporary concepts and terms used, the old Industrial Age management theories are still alive and well in large corporations.
As a mid-market CEO making the shift to a CLO, you can gain an advantage in the battle for the best and brightest minds because your culture can be that much more nimble and better than your corporate counterparts.
O. C. Tanner, like On-Purpose Partners, is a business reformer that’s bringing the emphasis back to the core purpose of business and its relationship to people and society as a profitable proposition. Their report, for all its good news and progress, is still subject to the state of the organizations being surveyed. I acknowledge O.C. Tanner as a thought leader in this people and cultural space. Hidden between the lines of the report is that these large companies are striving for progress but hamstrung by their Industrial Age–based management model.
Much as it is difficult to turn an aircraft carrier at sea, the momentum of their past keeps large corporations mired in the maze of incremental improvement and change management. CLO is disruptive and risky to the big dogs. Yet the CEO who decides to make the transition to CLO by embracing the three charges of a CLO will finally get the full effects of innovation over incrementalism.
What a wonderful discovery to know that a complementary company like O.C. Tanner exists in the marketplace of ideas. I feel like I’ve gone on some DNA company website and found a branch of the family I didn’t know existed.
Here’s the PDF of the O. C. Tanner report. Do yourself a favor and download it plus visit their site. As a CLO, you’ll learn a lot and will pick up three to five ideas you can readily implement to improve your corporate culture.
The Business Roundtable Is Coming Around to CLO
Source article: US Corporations: Not Just for Shareholders Any More
Here’s yet another leading indicator that the Chief Leadership Officer movement is needed more than ever. This decree by The Business Roundtable is noble in spirit but short on details for execution — nor is this the place for it.
From the article: “Alex Gorsky, chair and CEO of Johnson & Johnson and chair of the group’s corporate governance committee, summarized it: ‘This new statement better reflects the way corporations can and should operate today. It affirms the essential role corporations can play in improving our society when CEOs are truly committed to meeting the needs of all stakeholders.'”
Chapter 8 of Chief Leadership Officer is titled “Stakeholder Engagement.” To quote from that chapter, “‘Social capitalists’ aren’t new. Business is returning to its sacred roots,” informed the CLO. “Chris, business was always intended to improve society. We business people perverted it from increasing wealth to enriching ourselves too often at the expense of others. That’s bad business.”
The more you look around, the more you’ll see the signs that Chief Leadership Officers are the future top-ranking officers in companies. The Business Reformation is upon us. Will you innovate and be ahead of the curve? Now’s the time!
CLO on Audible is Here
Chief Leadership Officer is now available on Audible. Thanks to the production team:
- The cover art is masterfully crafted by the amazingly talented Terry Pappy of Better 3.
- After reviewing nearly 50 auditions, a selection team choose Michael Lenz to narrate the book. Since, he’s done The On-Purpose Person and The On-Purpose Business Person on audio book. We like Mike!
- Kimberly Hobscheid ably guided me through the Audible/ACX process to get to this place and will be helping spread the word within the Audible community and beyond.
Mike’s easy-listening, well-paced voice provides the mature, quiet, confident and trustworthy sound I heard in my ear when writing the manuscript. Here’s Mike audition plus samples from Chapters 2 and 5. Enjoy!