Preparing to be CEO

Grooming CEOs means knowing what the role entails and exploring what kind of CEO a person can be. The CEO role is different in content and structure from any other, yet the distinctions can get lost in the language around 'leadership' and 'management'. The role contains both, but is not merely either. 

McKinsey have just published an article [accessible here] addressing how to prepare for a CEO role in the light of the issues currently facing us. While it is focussed on those running large corporates, there are good insights here for anyone. 

1. The CEO role is issues-driven. 

All the issues facing the organisation come to the CEO's desk. There are some global issues affecting us all, but there are also issues specific to your organisation's industry and history. Are you demonstrably adept at handling this particular configuration of issues? Do you have a good issues map? And do you have a clear, sharable and pragmatic plan to address them? McKinsey provide a useful initial diagnostic for these questions, focussed on change and your capacity to lead it. 

2. The tasks a CEO needs to do are complex. 

The McKinsey article highlights some tasks - 'act like a CHRO', 'develop a strategy', 'ready your value creation thesis' - that are not 'doing things'. In particular they are tasks that the CEO needs to initiate, design and get done, but they are impossible to do alone. So to be a CEO requires a talent for seeing the whole organisational system, and the organisation's place within a larger system, then bringing together the right resources to generate timely, resilient and effective programs of action that he or she does not do but gets done. 

3 Be human

Amidst the analytic complexity of the role, today particularly, there is relational complexity. The CEO has to 'move from a private to a public persona', yet engage at a personal level across the organisation. Think, feel, be yourself, yet take on a role. This all has to sit with being authentic, not least because that's when you can work most effectively. What in your past experience has enabled you to hold this balance? And how can you become more adept at it? 

Taking on your first CEO role, especially in a professional services environment, when the stakeholders are your close, busy and vigilant peers, is one of the biggest times of growth in your career. It can seem overwhelming, yet structures such as the one offered by McKinsey can help you clarify what needs to be done and how you can get the results. 

Let me know what you think of the article and how it relates to the lessons you learnt in taking up your first CEO/MD/Managing partner role.