Think and act like a CEO

Running a Fortune 500 company as its CEO is arguably much more complex than piloting a Boeing 787 Dreamliner or an F-16 for that matter. Enter the cockpit of a fighter plane and you will be amazed by the myriad arrays of display panels and complex control systems.  Pilots will tell you that flying modern aircraft is more like “systems management” rather than seat-of-the-pants aviation.

I have been talking to multiple customers in various industries and the sentiment is same. Industry executives echo in unison that “embracing complexity” is a key pain point for today’s CEO as the organizations become more cumbersome due to interdependencies with a number of moving parts.  The interactions of the moving parts often lead to unpredictable outcomes, and some unhappy ones at that.

I have been following the interviews of CEOs from global companies and one thing that becomes evident is the fact that a CEO must have his or her “finger on the pulse” of the organization at all times, continuously monitoring the health of the various vital systems.  This allows the leader to identify problem areas and take rapid remedial actions to steer the organization back on track.

I have been musing about this issue over the last few months, and I feel that one of the ways in which the complexity conundrum can be solved is by breaking it down into smaller pieces and solving the puzzle one piece at a time without losing track of the bigger picture. What this means is that every manager in the organization must embrace the “CEO mindset” and must “think and act” like a CEO. Every manager — be it a profit center head, sales manager, program manager and even managers in supporting functions — must develop a broader perspective and run their units the way a CEO runs the company.

I have floated this idea among my teams, encouraging managers to develop a CEO mindset that will require them to understand the complex interplay of both the external forces (such as the global economic scenario, industry dynamics, customer and supplier expectations, and industry and technology trends) as well as the internal forces such as employee expectations, goals driving the upstream/downstream functions, financial imperatives, operational/technology challenges, etc.

Encouraging managers to “act like a CEO” has not only helped in motivating the employees by giving them a feeling of empowerment, but it has also helped in broadening their outlook and competencies. This new mindset has made the managers to think bigger and in an unconstrained manner which helped them solve problems in their units.  This end-to-end perspective helped in simplifying the existing complex processes. My managers are now accustomed to stretching and going the extra mile, taking complete ownership of the challenges facing their units, as well as developing a complete grip on the various parameters that indicate the health of the unit.

I have seen incredible results by adopting this approach within my teams, and I am sure other managers will also see the same outcome by embracing this philosophy. When this kind of behavior cascades top down — from the managers at the highest level to those at the lowest level — it will bring about a sea change in the way the organization responds to challenges and handles complexity.