I was recently amused by a wonderful yet puzzling article in the December 2011 issue of MIS Quarterly Executive titled “The Impact of Social Media on C-Level Roles.” In its executive summary, the article purports to focus on “the potential impact of social media on organizational leadership and governance at the C-level.” The article itself is wonderful because it does an effective job of highlighting four specific organizational structure models that depict where internal and external social media should be led. Yet it’s puzzling because it states, “The consensus across companies, industries and executives is that marketing and IT are converging.” Really? I don’t see this happening anywhere now or into the future. More importantly, I’m amused because one of its recommendations indicates, “The anticipated pervasiveness of a social
CEO Archive
I don’t own their shares. I have never worked for the company. I’m not aware of anyone within my strong or weak tie network that actually holds a position there either. The company I am referring to is TD Canada Trust. The CEO I’d like to highlight is Tim Hockey. Bottom line? He gets it. Tim (may I call you Tim?) serves as Chief Executive Officer and President of TD Canada Trust of The Toronto-Dominion Bank. He also serves as its Group Head of Canadian Banking and Insurance and as the Group Head of personal banking of The Toronto-Dominion Bank. That’s a lot of roles but hopefully one day he can squeeze me in for a beer or a lunch. I’d even wash his car
Organizations are changing. Some may be doing so due to various pressures caused by factors such as customer downsizing, market stagnation, competition and new economic realities. Others may be fine economically and growth-wise, but their transformation is caused by internal employees self-organizing for the purpose of becoming more collaborative, more engaged and certainly more open. Either way, it’s my opinion that the CEO of any organization (for profit or not-for-profit) truly needs to become a leader that isn’t just a Chief Executive Officer, rather, he/she needs to be much more collaborative, engaging and open. In a McKinsey & Company piece by Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller entitled “The CEO’s role in leading transformation”, the authors suggest that a CEO will be successful in any transformation