606: CEO Readiness: How Boards Decide Who Gets the Top Job

606: CEO Readiness: How Boards Decide Who Gets the Top Job

Byron Loflin, Global Head of Board Advisory at Nasdaq and co-author of CEO Ready, explained on the Strategy Skills Podcast why many talented executives never make it to the top.

" Because you perform well isn't going to automatically get you the job."

Boards are looking for more than results. They look for humility, curiosity, and authentic relationships across stakeholders. Byron shared a personal lesson from riding with Ronald Reagan before he was president:

"He was genuinely interested in others. And that surprised me. I didn't get the sense that he was a pompous or aristocratic kind of person. He was genuinely interested in identifying what are you interested in? What makes you tick?"

He also warned that unchecked ego is one of the biggest risks to leadership:

"Ego is a powerful motivator when it's focused properly. But when it becomes dominant in one's personality and drives inappropriate types of responses to the needs of others… Ego can become a significant problem."

To counter ego, he recommended building close, truth-telling relationships. This is what Byron said about conversations with his children:

"I listen to them very closely when they speak to me and I invite them to speak truth into my life."

And he reminded us that succession is political:

"Surprise is the enemy. Structure is your friend."

Finally, boards now expect leaders to be fluent in technology and disruption:

"The expectation of management delivering understanding on the relevancy of AI to your organization with the emphasis on relevancy."

Actions you can take now

  1. Seek feedback aggressively. Create a circle of truth-tellers: colleagues, mentors, even family, who will tell you the truth.

  2. Check your ego daily. Build humility into routines by asking: "Am I genuinely interested in others, or focused only on myself?"

  3. Engage all seven stakeholders. Byron identified investors, employees, vendors, customers, communities, regulators, and the environment as decisive. Map your relationships and strengthen the weakest link.

  4. Signal reliability to boards. Remove surprises. Show discipline in how you work and how you communicate.

Become AI-fluent. Don't chase every trend. Focus on the relevancy of AI and digital disruption to your business and be prepared to explain it clearly.

Get Byron's book, CEO Ready, here: https://tinyurl.com/z87xz94h

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141: Tesla is not an electric car company (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #22)

141: Tesla is not an electric car company (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #22)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we're going to focus on four major themes from last week's news. To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for "Strategy Skills" in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

5 Apr 202138min

140: The unspoken truth about strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #21)

140: The unspoken truth about strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #21)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we're going to focus on four major themes from last week's news. To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for "Strategy Skills" in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

29 Mars 202147min

139: The six tools of successful leaders (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #20)

139: The six tools of successful leaders (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #20)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we're going to focus on four major themes from last week's news. To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for "Strategy Skills" in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

22 Mars 202134min

138: Mothering a strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #19)

138: Mothering a strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #19)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we're going to focus on four major themes from last week's news. To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for "Strategy Skills" in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

15 Mars 202141min

137: Blair Sheppard, PwC global strategy head and author. On four urgent global crises and their strategic solutions

137: Blair Sheppard, PwC global strategy head and author. On four urgent global crises and their strategic solutions

In today's episode of the Strategy Skills podcast, we have a conversation with Blair Sheppard, Global Head of Strategy and Leadership for PWC. Blair shares his views of looming global crises driven by wealth disparity, technological disruption, the polarization of people, and declining trust in society's institutions. Blair Sheppard is also the Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, where he taught for thirty-three years. He was the principal force behind opening Duke's campus in China, and the founder and CEO of Duke Corporate Education. Blair is a regular speaker at high-caliber international forums including the Global Solutions Summit, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and Slush. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) and lives in Durham, North Carolina (US). In his new book, TEN YEARS TO MIDNIGHT: Four Urgent Global Crises and Their Strategic Solutions, Blair sets out why that timeline is so crucial, what the most urgent challenges are and the key elements of a solution. The world faces four crises: A crisis of prosperity, with rising inequality, poor life choices for young people, the squeezed middle class and a mass of people on the brink of retirement but lacking the savings to sustain them; A crisis of technology, as our economic system drives innovation but fails to manage unintended negative consequences which pollute key elements of life support, from our atmosphere to our news; A crisis of institutional legitimacy, as traditional institutions try to maintain their existing structures in the face of major global forces, and find themselves buckling and warping rather than adapting; and, A crisis of leadership, as those who should help us manage these crises instead focus on narrow priorities rather than leading the world towards holistic solutions. Get access to sample training from our advanced programs here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo We use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using our affiliate links, we will get a bonus).

11 Mars 20211h 10min

136: Rethinking M&A (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #18)

136: Rethinking M&A (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #18)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we're going to focus on four major themes from last week's news. To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for "Strategy Skills" in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

9 Mars 202138min

135: Apple disrupts a decades-old value chain migration (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #17)

135: Apple disrupts a decades-old value chain migration (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #17)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#17), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we're going to focus on four major themes from last week's news. To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for "Strategy Skills" in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

1 Mars 202138min

134: How to stop blaming Covid and start building revenue growth, with Kent Billingsley

134: How to stop blaming Covid and start building revenue growth, with Kent Billingsley

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast, from FIRMSconsulting.com. Today we have a very interesting guest, Kent Billingsley, who is going to talk about sales and the revenue side of management consulting. And about using the tools and techniques that he developed in his consulting career which he now applies in almost any kind of industry. We rarely talk about sales. So we thought it will be nice to do a podcast where we dive into this topic. Get Kent's book "ENTREPRENEUR TO MILLIONAIRE: How to Build a Highly Profitable, Fast-Growth Company and Become Embarrassingly Rich Doing It": https://amzn.to/3dU6aPN

26 Feb 202158min

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