"Something can be rejected competently only by the one who is at the same time able to defend it perfectly. And something can be advocated competently only by the one who is able to reject it perfectly." - Andras Laszlo.

Truth is that you don't need to be authentic to be successful in business; business is overwhelmingly (say 90%) a mechanical process where authenticity has no place: you buy what works for others, you implement what's proven (by others), you run things the way you and everybody else learned to run things: you go by the numbers. In the mechanical 90% part nobody is (allowed to be!) authentic.

Then there is that 10% where authenticity makes all the difference. It's not (only) about questioning the fundamentals and the conventional: it's about giving answers to ultimate questions. Not finding! Giving. Creating: seemingly from nothing. Not using the comfortable, lulling support of facts or evidence; having the courage to go all the way, and back: creating and representing the context for those who are busy with the 90% !

Without this effort nobody is authentic!

Without authenticity people in leadership roles are, unwittingly or otherwise, pretentious; they are forced to spend most of their time dealing with the mess their pretension create.

If you are in a CEO role and you want market leadership, you must dedicate more time to this 10% than to the 90%.

If you sit on a board of a company striving for great things and you are not authentic, you are a liability!

www.prakhsis.com