The Evolution of Chief Executives
Popular wisdom holds that CEOs ascend to the executive mountain top with a combination of management and leadership assets. This combination of knowledge, experience, perspective and relationship capital serves as the foundation of judgment.
From sound judgment, better CEOs create real strategic and economic value for their stakeholders – employees, investors, customers and suppliers. From sound judgment, they shape their company’s strategic agenda for growth, performance and change. And, according to a recent expose by Business Week, they engage in practices tied to:
- Innovation
- Customer Focus
- Productivity
- Risk Management
- Organization
A sense of urgency, smart execution, competitive savvy, resilience, strong resolve, collaboration, thoughtful readiness, cultural respect, diligence, insight and communication help. Bringing up executive talent is a critical imperative that deserves serious and specific sound engagement, and in companies large and small, the evolution of C-suite benchstrength has to be a strategic priority.
The CEO of the Future
Building executive-level competence is all about experience in specific management and leadership assets. The CEO of the future will not emerge from a simple formula of skillsets, but rather a dynamic formula of unfolding competencies and evolutionary thought. The capacity for relationships, the credibility of influence and the confidence of personal leadership are all part of the equation.