The CEO Test

Today brings a must-read book for leaders at all levels. The book is, The CEO Test, written by Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer. You’ll learn what truly matters to be a successful leader and you’ll discover a clear roadmap for succeeding in these seven critical challenges – the CEO test:

Can you develop a simple plan for your strategy?
Can you make the culture real—and matter?
Can you build teams that are true teams?
Can you lead transformation?
Can you really listen?
Can you handle a crisis?
Can you master the inner game of leadership?

“Passing the CEO test does not mean scoring a perfect ten out of then on each of the challenges. That would be unrealistic, as we all have our strengths and weaknesses. But we do believe that to succeed in a leadership role, you have to achieve a certain threshold level of proficiency in each of the skills,” explain the authors.

Throughout this no-nonsense insider’s guide to navigating leadership’s toughest challenges, you’ll discover critical insights, revealing stories, compelling quotes and valuable lessons from dozens of successful chief executives.

Some of my favorite takeaways from the book are these critical leadership questions and quotes:

Questions:

Can you create a vision that the frontline person can understand, and see how they fit into it?

How would you reimagine your company if you were starting it now, based on what you think the new normal will be once the crisis ends?

Quotes:

The status quo is enormously powerful, and the enemy of change.

When you have your own agenda when you’re listening to someone, what you’re doing is formulating your response rather than processing what the other person is saying.

Leaders need to be more visible than usual during times of crisis, because they need to set the tone through their words, deeds, and body language.

This week, authors Bryant and Sharer answered these questions about their book and the seven challenges that comprise the CEO test:

Adam Bryant

Kevin Sharer

Question: For someone new in their leadership role, which of the seven tests do you find is typically the most challenging for them?

The biggest challenges we see for all leaders, from new managers to veteran senior executives, involves creating clarity around strategy. In our extensive work with senior leaders across many companies, we have come to appreciate the degree to which the word “strategy” is a Rorschach test. Much like a classic inkblot, it means different things to different people.

When you ask some people about their strategy, they may go to a very high altitude, sharing generalities about what the company does. At the other extreme, executives can get very granular, saying that their strategy is the ten priorities they are working on just for the next quarter. What is often missing is a middle layer that answers the simple questions of, where are we going and how are we going to get there?

The most effective model for setting strategy we’ve encountered comes from Dinesh Paliwal, the former CEO of Harman International. He advocates a one-page exercise that states:

an overarching goal of what the company wants to achieve over a certain period (which might be shorter for start-ups and longer for more established companies);
the three or four levers that a company has to pull to achieve the goal;
the challenges that have to be overcome to achieve those goals; and a scoreboard for measuring progress and success.

Developing a simple plan – whether you are running a small team or a division —requires the important and rare leadership skill of simplifying complexity. There is a fine line, of course, between simplifying and oversimplifying, but the best leaders are able to boil down the strategy to just a handful of memorable ideas.

At Disney, for example, CEO Bob Iger has said from the start of his tenure that the company will focus on embracing technology in all its forms, developing great content, and global expansion. That may seem obvious — the best strategies often do seem obvious — but they have been the guiding principles of Disney’s growth.

Question: For someone who has been a leader for quite a while, which of the seven tests do you find is typically the most challenging for them?

The test of building and leading a team of direct reports is a challenge for even the most experienced leaders, who can fall into the trap of thinking that if they assemble a group of high-achieving executives and call them a team, then they will then act like a team.

But leading a team and being part of a team are very different skills, and the members of, say, a C-Suite team have probably spent much of their career being at the head of the table. Getting them to work effectively with their peers, even when they may be competing for resources, requires intentional effort from the person leading the team.

We believe there are four key questions that every leader must answer for a team to be effective:

What is the purpose of the team?
Who should be on the team?
How will the team work together?
What is the leader’s role on the team?

While every team is a work in progress, and must constantly be refreshed with people who have the skills to take the company to the next level, a measure of success will come from clarity around answers to each of those questions, which are too frequently overlooked and result in dysfunctional teams.

And to the first question, “What is the purpose of the team?” there should only be one answer: to work together on tasks and setting priorities that are best executed as a team. What are the big strategic lifts that need the combined force of the entire team or subgroups of the team? Maybe internal cultural challenges need everyone’s attention, or industry dynamics are demanding a faster timetable for a digital transformation. These are the sprawling “How are we going to do this?” questions that no individual member of the team can answer alone.

Question: When preparing your successor, which of the seven tests should you without doubt ensure your successor can pass?

For the most senior roles in the C-Suite, particularly the CEO job, there is a test that is more about the inner game of leadership, rather than what you must do as a leader. Top leadership jobs are endurance tests. Not only do they require tremendous stamina, but they also require leaders to have a thick skin to handle the relentless criticism and second-guessing. It is easy for leaders to feel as if they are losing control of their lives to the job, because there is always more to do, and there are always crises, both small and large. To remain effective in their jobs and not be overwhelmed, leaders have to take care of themselves first so that they can help others.

In a sense, these roles are a kind of paradox: the very best leaders are selfless—it is not about you, but rather what you can do for the people you lead and for your organization. Yet if you aspire to be that selfless leader, then you must learn to take care of yourself first; otherwise, your physical and emotional energy will be compromised, limiting your ability to help others. So, winning the “inner game” of leadership means answering the following questions, among others:

How do you manage your ego, which the trappings of leadership have a way of inflating, so that you don’t become overly confident and start communicating in ways that are off-putting to people?
How do you handle all of the stresses from the endless demands, the weight of expectations, and the consequences of your decisions?
How do you remain calm on the outside when you may be in turmoil on the inside?
Where do you get the stamina to be your very best, in every encounter, through days of back-to-back meetings with different groups, all of which have outsized expectations of you?
How do you make time for yourself so you can reflect beyond the demands and pressures of today to peer over the horizon?

While these pressures are particularly magnified for CEOs, every person in a leadership role experiences them to some degree.

Thank you to the book's publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

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