Successful businesses are run by CEOs who have a distinctive mindset that propels themselves, their teams, and their companies to the top of their industry’s leader board. If one want to become the best CEO one can be, embracing and adopting a CEO mindset is imperative.
Being a CEO at any of the world’s largest companies is among the most challenging roles in business. Billions, and even trillions, are at stake and the fates of tens of thousands of employees often hang in the balance and having the mindsets and practices of excellent CEOs is a must. Yet, even when “can’t miss” high-achievers win the top job, very few excel. Thirty percent of Fortune 500 CEOs last fewer than three years, and two out of five new CEOs are perceived to be failing within eighteen months.
Importance of CEOs mindset for business growth
For CEOs on whose shoulder the burden of being the one on whom everyone counts, an excellent mindset is sorely needed. It’s not easy to run one of the world’s largest and most complex companies. The odds that a CEO will lead an average company to become a top performer are only 4%.
Those who get it right, however, deliver outsize results.
The six mindsets of excellent CEOs
According to McKinsey research, top companies create nearly 90% of their industry’s value and 30x more value than the middle three quintiles combined. According to McKinsey CEO excellence is one who has tremendous social, environmental, and ethical impact. Let’s look into the six mindsets of excellent CEOs.
The multibillion-dollar question, then, is what is it that separates those who deliver breakaway impact from the rest?
Strategic decisions
Understanding on making the right strategic decisions in a timely manner rather than it being 100% perfect. Strategy and timing are two of the most important things to consider when making decisions.
Remember that pausing before making a decision is completely fine. However, if you do have time to pause, do so and remember that your decisions don’t have to be perfect.
The decisions you make should guide your business strategically to where you want it to go.
Focus on growing value
Focus on your business from the top-down, not bottom-up. One of the biggest mistakes that CEOs and entrepreneurs of small businesses make is remaining stuck inside their business.
Having a CEO mindset means being able to think ahead and plan where your business is going and how it’s going to get there. Working top-down means focusing on growing value in your business.
Relinquish control
Let’s be honest… as entrepreneurs, we are complete control freaks. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but your inner control freak can have a tendency to step in when they aren’t needed (or wanted).
As much as we’d like to believe we’re the best of the best at everything we do, this mindset usually ends up working against us. There’s only so much one person can do within a business. You’ve got to delegate tasks and authority. By relinquishing control to other members of your team, you gain more control of the business because now you have time to focus on actually growing the business.
Strategy and plan
Don’t set goals and make decisions without thinking things through. If you have a random idea or you want to jump onto something that’s trending, don’t!
Successful CEOs of small businesses don’t let trends or anything else distract them from their main focus. One need to think about strategy first.
Simplify the process
One of the worst things you can do as the CEO of a small business is to overcomplicate things for other people. Keep things as simple as possible so that they can be repeated consistently. Optimising processes inside your business is key for scaling and continuing to grow. Try to simplify things in business and measure the results. Understand metrics and keep track of the results to help identify what is working and what isn’t.
Work with patience and discipline
Growing a business takes time. Many businesses have failed catastrophically because the CEO let their emotions run the business as their mindset is not correct. Fear that things will go wrong can really nibble away at your self-confidence and your confidence in your business.
As the CEO of your business, you must be able to take calculated risks without fear.
As a CEO try to embrace a different mindset of patience and discipline. Scaling a successful business doesn’t happen overnight and patience is needed.
Building a business takes patience and you need to be disciplined. Not only that, but you also have to make sure you’re running on calculated guesses, not out of fear or greed.
Given the evidence that following the mindsets and practices of excellent CEOs lead to success in some of the highest-profile, highest-stake, and most complex leadership positions. This itself stands to reason that these CEOs mindsets are very likely to apply to the vast majority of leadership roles.
