A lot of magic is ascribed to CXO titles. Often there is more real influence in other parts of the network, like middle management.
No matter what you think of the CXO roles, one CXO role is critical: The Chief Me Officer.
The functions of a Chief Me Officer are as follows:
- Discover your personal purpose
- Understand your own strengths and opportunities (others will be happy to volunteer your weaknesses and threats)
- Set some longer term strategic goals for yourself and a few immediate short term experiments
- Engage your personal networks to align to your own plans
- Build your own capabilities by developing your own personal knowledge management approaches
- Lead the work to deliver on your personal plan
A successful Chief Me Officer recognises the ‘buck stops with the CMeO’ on all matters relating to you, your life and your career. Like a good organisation leader they don’t just focus on one part of their business, you need a whole of life and community view of the impacts of you. With this kind of accountability, this is not a role you can outsource. Family, friends, mentors, organisations, colleagues and people leaders can all help, but they won’t deliver on the plans you need to be successful.
Once you build your plan to become a successful Chief Me Officer, you will be well placed to lead others, engaging in collaboration in the new networked ways of working. The future of networked working needs capable leaders in every role. How can you start your leadership journey better than by leading yourself?
Once you know how to become a CMeO, you can graduate to being a Chief Us Officer. That’s when the leadership journey gets really interesting…
