How to get fired at the C-level, reviewed

By @SimonCocking. Review of How to get fired at the C-level by Peter Taylor. Available to buy here from Amazon.

Getting fired at the C-level is easy – and this book will tell you exactly how to go about it with ruthless efficiency. But perhaps not getting fired is your preferred outcome and, if that is the case, then you might have a challenge or two in the arena of strategy execution since the number one reason CEOs get fired is mismanaging change!

Leading executives, it seems, do too little about strategy implementation, do not apply the appropriate level of attention to such critical organisational change, and often relegate sponsorship and leadership to lower management, whilst the c-suite get on with their ‘day jobs’.

‘How to get fired at the C-level’ explores this challenge, and since all challenges are really opportunities, will show ways to not only significantly reduce change failures but also how to dramatically raise the capability, speed, and success rates of delivering strategic change in your organisation.

It’s a catchy title, but of course it is actually about how not to get fired, still we all figured that, so I guess you roll with it. It’s well written, early on he is clear in establishing that it is mis-managing change that will get you fired. Naturally you could then decide to try and dodge the bullet by not managing change at all, but as we know business is littered with the no-longer existing (or as successful as they were) companies who took that route, Nokia, Kodak and all your own personal favourites.

It’s a short book, and finished slightly more abruptly than I had been expecting at just over 100 pages in. Perhaps for too busy CEOs and change management leaders it is all they have time for anyway, so that might not be a problem. I was enjoying it though, and his slightly sardonic tone.

Overall though is a relevant and insightful book to have written, even if perhaps it might have been a blessing if some inept leaders were actually fired faster. For the rest of us, trying to manage change as it hurls it’s way at us, then it is a useful book to read.

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