THE FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE: The CEO – 1 – Larisa B. Miller

It is often said that there is nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success, and this keen observation is proven time and time again, as we navigate enterprise through the often-uncharted seas of progress. The CEO is the captain of the ship, responsible for the steering the vessel to a designated destination, while avoiding as many storms as possible. But navigating the future of enterprise as a CEO requires the flexibility and willingness to constantly reshape mindset along with the business model. As a CEO, if you allow yourself to get comfortable with your current successes, start packing up your office, because if you aren’t continually innovating your products, processes, services, as well as your definition of ‘value’, I guarantee that one of your competitors is, and you’ll be chasing them rather than leading them. Most of your competitors are comfortable where they are, all coagulating together in the center of mediocrity.

What happens when you are stuck in the middle of the road with the rest of your competitors, doing business the same way everyone else in your industry is doing it? Well…the answer is simple. The middle of the road is where you get killed.

“Comfortable success”, that unfortunate arsenic that slowly kills a business over time, victimizing those who fail to anticipate change, who fail to innovate products and processes (until competitive peer pressure forces you to do so), or those who fail to build a culture of value, will swallow up enterprises who fail to differentiate themselves in this very crowded marketplace. Using the crutch of past success to prop up their current operating model, businesses who live off the glory of yesterday, reminding everyone that their business model has worked for years, are on life support. You cannot solve new problems with old solutions, and the keystone of shaping a business to be relevant and resilient in the future begins and ends with the mindset of the CEO.

The CEO is the single most important element in building a culture of value. Go ahead and try to challenge that…I guarantee that for every point you raise on the independent creation of value, the counterpoint is always that it couldn’t be fully realized without the leadership of the CEO. For sure, the team is critically important, but a team always needs a captain.

The policies of the enterprise must shore-up the corporate values and their institutional commitment to excellence, but the CEO is responsible for upholding and enforcing the policies. The strategy for resiliency, growth and innovation must be forward-thinking and at least five-years ahead of current times, but strategy is nothing without a leader who executes. While the actualization of all these elements are the bricks that form the structure of the enterprise…the CEO is the mortar.

The CEO leads by example, good or bad. If the CEO creates a culture of respect, openness, and trust, then employees will be empowered to be a part of the solutions of the future, rather than the problems of the past. When a CEO cares about the ideas and perspective of the employees, from seasoned executives down to the emerging professionals (a fancy way of saying entry-level folks), they are more in tune with the potential challenges, fractures and inefficiencies that can derail a company over time, and they can be on the leading edge of opportunity, as well. When the CEO empowers the employees to challenge current processes, hacking apart products, operations, and inefficiencies, they are rewarded with game-changing ideas and cutting-edge solutions which will ensure that they are constantly leading the pack of their competitors.

When a CEO trusts the employees enough to have a seat at the table of innovation, they are rewarded with greater brand loyalty, leading to economic acceleration through product growth, enhanced operational performance, increased productivity, and significantly higher rates of employee retention.

Being a leader…carrying the title of CEO can be a daunting undertaking, requiring a great deal of courage, resolute determination and the willingness to swim against the current. It is said that courage is the antivenom to regret.

If you doubt this statement, ask the CEOs of Kodak, Blockbuster and Nokia, as their companies were breathing their dying breath, if they suffer from the regret of ‘playing it safe’. I’m certain the list of their regrets is long, and topping the list will most assuredly be their failure to diversify and innovate. The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones, it ended because of progress, but for all the Fortune 500 companies who disappear with a short twenty-year time span, one of the main reasons cited is usually their inability to anticipate and embrace progress, diversification, and change.

There is a great deal of risk associated with progress, and for sure, there is a great deal of risk associated with change, but the CEO who recognizes that risk is a necessary steppingstone of business success will be a leader with a legacy, rather than a leader who suffers the wounds of lessons learned in hindsight. When you take a risk and you fail, you haven’t really failed. You are simply navigating the sometimes-lonely pathway forward, taking a machete to the weeds in front of you to cut a new avenue to opportunity.

It won’t always be an easy job, but nothing worthwhile is easy. The successful CEO adapts their mindset to manage the setbacks, rather than adapting the mindset to success. Success is the return on the investment that a CEO makes when he commits to lead an enterprise through the uncharted weeds. A CEO embraces the discovery of ways that won’t work so that they can more clearly see emergent pathways of possibility. A CEO knows that only by taking risks, can you learn the most valuable lessons. When you take risks, you are fortifying the foundation on which your business is built. Sometimes risks lead to undesirable results. But, what happens if you DON’T take risks and you fail? What if you choose to stay in your comfort zone instead of venturing into the black hole of the unknown? You’re finished. The end. Game over. There is nowhere to go if you aren’t brave enough to risk ACTION.

Every moment in business is a risk. Some risks are small and inconsequential with relatively predictable results. Some risks have a high fear factor, but I can tell you this…fear is a reaction but the courage to take a risk is a decision. Taking a risk is a decision you cannot afford to turn your back on, as the greatest successes lie on the other side of our greatest fears.

A CEO who dares to ‘risk’ the steps they know they must take, will discover new concepts and ideas, will innovate new products, and will lead the business down exciting new pathways of opportuity. That path is not always smooth and easy – sometimes it is filled with holes and pitfalls, but the greatest success doesn’t come from a leader who prioritizes “comfortable success”.

A racecar is safe in the garage, but that’s not what a racecar was made for. As a CEO, the journey to success and your reputation as a legacy-maker requires you to drive that car out of the garage. Sometimes you will drive slowly and follow a map and sometimes your RPMs will be in the red with the scenery rushing by you, but if you trust the journey, each conclusion you reach along the way – be it successful or, perhaps, not so much, will leave you stronger, wiser and more capable as a leader than you were at the start of the journey.

Whether you are hired as the leader of a Fortune 500 company, or you are running a lemonade stand in your front yard, you are a CEO. Your reputation, your business growth, the team who supports you (and who you support), and the legacy you leave will all depend on your ability to create value for the enterprise you lead.