Well, the traits mentioned in the BI article are so commonplace in management literature (I can remember studying basically that same list almost 30 years ago) that they're kind of like mom and apple pie. There's a bit less emphasis on command and control, and a bit more human interest emphasis, but these supposedly effective traits have been set down on paper for over a generation now. There's nothing new in what Facebook finds makes an effective manager. And more particularly, what's talked about in that article is so generic it could apply equally to a factory, a commercial enterprise, or a non-profit.
It strikes me that the key question the Board needs to think about is whether they want a manager, a leader or a visionary.
Risker/Anne
On 7 March 2016 at 01:48, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
On the topic of researching what makes someone a successful CEO (as opposed to a manager who may or may not be a CEO), it's interesting that the resources that I've found on the Internet tend to describe current trends in management fads (which aren't particularly helpful in our situation, IMO) and/or traits of people who have been promoted to CEO (which are not necessarily synonymous with traits that make someone *successful *as a CEO).
My hunch is that traits of successful CEOs may vary a bit depending on the nature of the organization. Some skills are likely to be similar (such as communication, accounting, business law, and market research) while others may be quite different (for example, the CEO of General Motors probably needs to have a different reservoir of industry-specific knowledge than the CEO of the Humane Society.) Also, the mentalities of organizations can be quite different, for example the CEO of Microsoft is probably very interested in growing market share for a wide array of existing product lines, while the chief executive of a specialty pharmaceutical research company may be far more focused on R&D for a small batch of high-risk, high-potential products that have yet to come to market.
Narrowing the focus to the more specific case of the WMF CEO, it seems to me that the skills listed in the BI article are a good place to start. We might also be interested in mission alignment, cultural fit, knowledge of the legal and fundraising landscapes, and familiarity with open source technologies that WMF uses. As others have mentioned, the CEO and the CTO are distinct roles; it seems to me that if we get a solid CTO then we can de-emphasize the the technical skills in the CEO search and focus on the wide array of other skills that would be valuable for the CEO.
Pine
mama
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 7:49 PM, Greg Grossmeier greg@wikimedia.org wrote:
<quote name="Pine W" date="2016-03-06" time="19:19:20 -0800"> > Food for thought: > >
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-best-managers-exhibit-these-7-behavi...
I think that is great food for thought for managers of teams, definitely.
I'm not sure it applies to managers of managers or executives; only because those positions weren't a part of this investigation.
Greg
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