The CEO’s Job
Posted on August 26, 2009 |
Guest blogging today is George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, who for 30 years has been advising CEOs on the impact of technology on business. He also blogs at The Counterintuitive CEO:
A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble's former CEO (now Chairman), penned a Harvard Business Review article in May that nicely summarizes the job of CEO. Get your assistant to buy it, because you should read it.
Lafley argues that because CEOs don’t report to anyone within the organization, only they can truly advocate for customers and shareholders. As Lafley's guru Peter Drucker once said, “The CEO is the link between the Inside that is 'the organization' and the Outside of society, economy, technology, markets, and customers. Inside there are only costs. Results are only on the outside."
Lafley states it well: "The CEO can see opportunities that others don't see and, as the one person whose boss isn't another company employee, make the judgments and the tough calls others are unable to make."
The job of connecting the inside to the outside entails four activities, he writes:
- Defining in clear terms the nature of the outside; that is, identifying the target customers.
- Setting strategy. That means deciding what the company will do, and what it won’t.
- Balancing short term expenditures with long-term goals and ensuring the right trade-off.
- Setting and reinforcing the company’s values.
Lafley's concepts are highly germane, especially in the aftermath of the Gateway Recession. Fundamental changes will be coming for customers, market structures, media, and marketing. This will not be a time for CEOs to hunker down and stay internally focused.
Lafley's article is a call for the ultimate leader to get out of the office, shed old thinking, open himself to the impending societal revolution, and advocate for new ways of operating.
Or as Drucker states: "One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it. In a period of upheavals, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm."
