Know whether you are a fixer, a builder, or a maintainer.

principle — attributed to Don Welsh

The most useful thing an executive can know is which stage of an organization they belong to. Welsh wants a company either building or broken, and admits he is a poor maintenance man. Careers derail when fixers take maintenance jobs and maintainers inherit fires. Diagnose yourself first, then choose the job to match the season the organization is actually in, not the one on the org chart.

For executives evaluating a role, and for boards writing a job spec. Ask what stage the organization is genuinely in — turnaround, growth, or stewardship — and whether the candidate's track record maps to that stage rather than to the title.

self-diagnosis, career-fit, executive-typology, organizational-stage