Work Daze

Answer honestly now. Does there lurk somewhere deep inside you, a horrible, terrible, all-consuming desire to become a boss? Admit it. Despite your reputation as a “regular Joe” or a “regular Jane,” there is, existing below your famous over-the-cubicle-wall raves and inside-the-lunch-room rants over the follies of your managers, a secret desire to be one yourself.

And not just one, but number one. Numero Uno. El Grande Queso. Face up to it, bunky. You want to be CEO.

Now that you’ve come clean about your secret dreams to rule the business world from behind a desk big enough to land a Gulfsteam jet, two of which you happen to own. Now that you’ve confessed your desire to step out of your German sports car in English shoes with the most recent statement from your Swiss bank rattling around in your Italian briefcase, now we’re ready to discuss how you can actually achieve your goal.

Well, Alan Cox is ready. Mr. Cox, a “noted author and consultant who has worked with, recruited, and coached the CEOs of many leading companies,” is ready, willing and possibly even able to, as he puts it, “unleash the executive in you.”

You could get Mr. Cox’s advice if you hired him a personal executive coach as personal executives at Kraft and Pillsbury have done, but that could cost multiple thousands of dollars a day, which could be difficult to scrape up if your top executive position with its top executive salary is still in the fantasy stage. Or you could shell out $24.99 and buy a copy of his latest book, “YOUR INNER CEO: Unleash the Executive Within.”

If you are beginning to suspect that brother Cox is all about unleashing hidden forces deep inside you, you would be right. In fact, both his consultancy and his book utilize – and I’m quoting again – “the Style-of-Life theory of famed Vienna psychologist Alfred Adler to help readers excavate and truly learn their hidden goals, strengths and weaknesses.”

This sounds exciting enough – bring in the Caterpillar D-10’s and let’s start mucking out that murky subconscious of yours – but it could also be dangerous. Imagine the chaos if everyone in your company started showing their inner feelings. There would be anarchy, if not outright war. And what happens when you, gentle reader, reveals the totality of your anger and hostility, rather than continuing your current approach of tamping down the rage by medicating yourself with jelly donuts?

I suppose we’ll have to risk it, because author Cox insists that “to succeed in the top job, people must attain grounding, a confident and accurate self-awareness that can guide them through all the tough situations and decisions they’ll encounter as a leader.” In other words, if the price of unleashing the awesome ambition in your addled brain is to embrace the work of Dr. Adler, so be it.

Since my personal Style-of-Life is too cheap to shell out $24.99, I turned to the book’s web site, yourinnerceo.com to learn more about the good doctor’s theories. Frankly, I was hoping that Adler was as obsessed with sex as Freud, but no such luck. Style-of-Life, according to Adler, according to Cox, is “an organized set of convictions of which the individual, at best, is only dimly aware.”

If your convictions are no better organized than your file cabinet, it will not be easy to find out if you have what it takes to be a CEO. It must be done, however, since a destructive Style-of-Life “serves as a looming threat and needs to be replaced.” How you replace something so difficult to see is, well, difficult to see. This is why a protégé of Doctor Adler’s came up with three fill-in-the-blank sentences guaranteed to reveal your self-image, world view and ultimate purpose – the basic building blocks of a Style-of-Life.

So shut your office door, if you have one, and complete the following:

I am…

Life is…

My central goal is…

Was that good for you? Are you beginning to see what needs to be excavated and what needs to be unleashed? Personally, I am DUBIOUS about the value of psychological mumbo-jumbo in helping you become a CEO. I also believe life is TOO SHORT to even try. But, then again, my central goal is to MAKE IT TO THE LIVING ROOM COUCH WITH A FROSTY BREW IN MY HAND BEFORE DANCING WITH THE STARS COMES ON. And if that isn’t the goal of a top CEO, I don’t know what is.