Change is never easy, especially if what you’re doing now seems to work just fine. “Changing yourself in the job, especially if you’re doing well, is one of the hardest things to do,” says Andrew Liveris, former CEO and chairman of Dow Chemical.
Why Today’s Leaders Need to Be Perpetual Learners
“Changing yourself in the job, especially if you’re doing well, is one of the hardest things to do.”
August 11, 2023
Summary.
Andrew Liveris likes to defy expectations. Born to immigrant parents in the Australian outback, he would eventually rise to the top of the corporate world, taking over in 2004 as CEO of Dow Chemical. In that job, which he held for 14 years, he won widespread credit for pushing an ambitious sustainability agenda, no easy task at one of the world’s biggest chemical producers. In this episode of “The New World of Work”, he offers his thoughts on leadership in tough times. He says executives need to be far more proactive, to find ways to discern relevant facts in a society that increasingly offers competing narratives of the truth. To do this, he says, leaders need to get out to the front lines, to travel, to perpetually reinvent themselves.