There is no gainsaying that this new era of business will be defined by companies that have the most effective and peak-performing leaders, who create the most exceptional experience for their people. The times ahead are going to be tough. Beyond their abilities, experiences and expertise, CEOs need an expanding bandwidth for faster adaptability and agility. What do these look like? Sharpness and clarity in understanding the complexities of the present, tapping into the bigger opportunities of the future and aligning the forces required to do both.
Dear CEO, are you constantly putting out fires in your business? Do you feel increasingly overwhelmed and stressed-out about your leadership responsibilities? Are you lacking a deep sense of focus, freedom and fulfillment? If your answer is in the affirmative, then understand that it does not have to be this way.
Business leadership is one of the best ways to live a purposeful life and create big impact on others. However, it is becoming increasingly hard to do so in today’s world of cut-throat competition, without what we call the sustainable leadership and business mindset. Our service promise is to help you get back in charge of your life, leadership and business.
In a volatile and uncertain business landscape, our clients count on us to sustain and most importantly, elevate their productivity. Everyday at TOA, we work diligently to help impact-driven business leaders (mostly sustainability-minded CEOs and COOs) achieve daily peak performance, so they can enjoy a thriving life, leadership and business.
Based on time-tested research, study and experience, we have collated 5 key factors that negatively impact the effective performance of CEOs. Use this list to gauge where you need to address quickly and take action FAST.
1. POOR PLANNING
There are 3 types of plan every CEO must have:
- Personal Plan
A personal plan or what you may call a life plan promotes the long-term well-being and performance of a leader. It has become 10x harder to manage a business without managing personal life. This is the reason we place special emphasis on life harmony. In addition, being a good leader is not enough anymore. Leadership is highly demanding, hence great CEOs plan for self-care, personal development, strength building and importantly, their personal relationships. They are mindful of all aspects of their lives and intentional about creating harmony across all spheres. They appreciate the need to relax, review their lives, and center themselves daily, while understanding that what got them here, cannot sustain them for the next level. This is how they stay grounded, growing and flourishing while equipping themselves to model the best values throughout their organization. Checkout our last post on 3 easy ways CEOs can manage stress.
- Business Plan
A business plan also known as a strategic plan helps a CEO achieve clarity of vision and simplicity in explaining it. This also supports the overall culture and strategy of a business and reduces the need for the CEO to constantly micro-manage other functional units within the organization. It ensures that well-designed principles and effective processes are in place to support decision making and long-term planning.
- Operational Plan.
An operational or operating plan helps the CEO understand the functional units within the business, how each constituent fits into the big vision of the business and how to establish an effective integration across all interdependent business departments or units. This ensures that departments or units are highly flexible, adaptive and peak-performing – a testament to the need for process design, people enablement and process improvement.
We help visionary CEOs in high-growth early and mid-market businesses develop and customize these 3 types of plans. Talk to us today.
2. LOW STANDARDS
This goes beyond just having business policies. Principles, philosophies and priorities are the elements of a CEO’s standards. Standards determine how great we think, how high we go, the quality of service we deliver and how we consistently evolve. In a highly competitive landscape, it’s hard to outperform those you cannot outthink and it is imperative to think more swiftly, intuitively, perceptively and accurately. A great plan without continuous great thinking will easily fall flat, especially as we are in a rapidly evolving world. CEOs must keep reviewing and updating their leadership psychology alongside company policies.
Without these, they will be excessively reliant on their past skills and knowledge which have not only become obsolete but inadequate in the face of a rapidly changing business ecosystem. Over dependence on past methodologies or experiences is a big factor with weak standards. Having facts and figures without the ability to glean deep insights from them is another cause of low standards that can potentially impact a CEO’s performance.
We help CEOs and their executives boost their philosophies for peak-performance so they can flourish in their leadership responsibilities.
3. STRUGGLING LEADERSHIP
CEOs thrive when they delegate but should they delegate to just anyone? No! They need reliable executive and management support for effective delegation. A CEO with a struggling executive leadership or management group will spend more time dealing with work that should have been handled effectively by their delegates or they’ll be caught spending company resources cleaning up mistakes that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.
A high trust business requires having high trust leaders and managers who can offer CEOs great support, thus increasing their effectiveness.
Learn more about how we help business leaders boost their productivity sustainably and book a demo to get started here.
4. LOW-POTENTIAL TEAM
Since a chain is as strong as its weakest link, CEOs must primarily ensure that the people who join their business have great potentials, are well aligned, and brought on-board the vision from day one. High performing leaders look beyond great resumes and work experiences. They are in search of high-potential and high-performance talents who can achieve steady growth alongside the business and who can handle new challenges. This philosophy holds sway at the e-commerce giant Amazon. While interviewing one of their senior Human Resource Partners, she said “At Amazon, every day is Day One” – There are always new challenges such that teams cannot afford to settle. One female CEO and celebrated fashion designer – Rebecca Minkoff, in an excerpt from this entrepreneur.com article said Hire “mini-entrepreneurs”. These are people who are nimble, can multitask, and think big. You want them on your team!
Without the above, business growth may stagnate, because of complacent and misaligned teams. CEOs should also build trust, legitimacy, and relationships across all levels of their organization and must invest in earning the support of all internal stakeholders. This is important for gleaning reliable everyday business information. Rebecca also shared in that entreprenuer.com article that “territorialism is counterproductive”. A great CEO doesn’t have the “this is my business” attitude. He fosters partnership, collaboration and contribution which makes team members feel strongly valuable, enthusiastic and a sense of business ownership. Creating an environment for genuine and open conversations where formality is diffused, is a great strategy to adopt.
5. BAD CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Most businesses will have to fight tooth and nail for every potential customer. The question now is how CEOs can maximize the resources spent on acquiring these customers through optimizing the customer’s experience. Beyond cultivating good customer relationship skills, CEOs must ensure they and everyone within the organization are customer centric.
CEOs should prioritize the impact of their product more than its greatness. Rather than ask “Is our product (good or service) awesome?” Always ask the ultimate question “Does our product (good or service) deliver an impactful experience?” Importantly, remember that a CEO is seen as the face of a business and plays a key role in the overall customer’s perception of the company. Therefore, he/she should endeavor to reflect the values and essence of the business.
If there is one effective thing sustainable CEOs should do daily, it should be to spend time with customers. You can do this through consistently reviewing overall customer ratings, complaints and feedback and encourage the swift resolution of customer complaints. Allocating 30 minutes to an hour daily for this task will help the CEO maximize the business’s highly important resource. There is no debating that customers are a key factor in business success and sustainability.
In conclusion, effective and high-performing CEOs apply an optimal mix of these proven strategies. If, however, you are unsure of how to make these strategies a habit so you can enjoy consistent peak performance, we are here to help.
Sustainability-minded CEOs and COOs in high-growth early to mid-market companies count on us to sustainably level-up their business leadership. If this sounds like you, we would love to connect with you. Click here to learn more and get started.
Looking forward to serving you more.
To a more Harmonious Life, Leadership and Business
Jesmine Onyeukwu
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