For many organizations, the role of CEO requires a strategic vision for the business that centers on delivering exceptional customer service.
At the end of the day, the customer has the power to take their business away at any moment, so it’s crucial to keep them front and center when it comes to strategy to ensure the business delivers services according to the customer’s needs.
However, while it’s easy to talk about delivering a great customer experience, it’s far harder to achieve.
Lessons for successful leadership
While every CEO and business leader is different, drawing on their varied experiences and learnings over the course of their careers, there are a number of elements that remain the same.
Whether they’re just stepping into the C-suite or taking the reins of a new business after decades leading other companies to success, here are three key lessons every CEO must consider:
1. Align actions, tactics and projects to the company mission
It’s crucial to find a key principle that every team in the organization can use to guide them. If a project does not deliver on the mission or key principle, it should not be a priority.
Achieving the mission starts at the executive level. As such, for organizations that deliver customer service, which is virtually every organization in existence, leadership teams should meet with customers regularly to truly understand their needs.
Having such engagement with customers empowers leaders to get to the core about what customers like about the business and its services or solutions and, more importantly, uncover what still needs to be solved.
The worlds of business and technology are changing quickly, and organizational leaders must be able to pivot to achieve success and business continuity.
Taking the time to better understand these customer values should help to inform the strategic vision and ensure that vision ripples down to every manager, engineer and customer support specialist so that every cog in the business machine is aligned and working toward the same goal.
For the best chance of success, this same vision should be reinforced at every opportunity.
2. Give every team member a role and a voice
True alignment goes beyond a shared goal; instead, it should include every person on a team feeling heard, understood and above all, respected and valued. Building a strong and cohesive team is a necessity, and seamless collaboration is essential to achieve this.
It’s the responsibility of leaders to ensure every team member feels heard and appreciated while challenging them to be better every day. There are different ways to achieve this in business, from providing regular opportunities for employee feedback to including team members in the development of the strategic vision.
It’s important to find a way that works for the business and the people that make it a success, and find a way to build that into the core of the company.
3. Be flexible and adaptable
Even with a high-functioning, cohesive team, the best-laid plans can still go awry, making flexibility and adaptability crucial tools to have in an organization’s arsenal.
The worlds of business and technology are changing quickly, and organizational leaders must be able to pivot to achieve success and business continuity.
A core responsibility of any CEO is to push people to achieve their full potential, beyond what they think is possible, and all leaders should pledge to practice what they preach.
Leaders can achieve this by dedicating time to meeting with customers, partners, employees, investors and anyone at the top of their game with insights to share. Doing so will empower those same leaders to prepare for what is to come and change course as necessary.
A lesson for the heart
While these three lessons are crucial for leaders to learn and impart to their organizations, there’s one lesson they need to take directly to heart for themselves: Be accountable. Accountability is an essential leadership tactic that empowers successful teams and shows trust between people.
CEOs are accountable to their executive teams for big goals and important conversations, as well as to every employee across the organization for keeping the business moving forward. As the head of the company, CEOs play an important role in creating the chemistry of the company.
Through leading by example, this accountability can become multidirectional to ensure every team member is accountable to the leadership, as well as to every other team and employee they work with.
A core responsibility of any CEO is to push people to achieve their full potential, beyond what they think is possible, and all leaders should pledge to practice what they preach.
If a company is going to share a grand vision, everything the CEO does should reinforce that. This means making sure everyone in the business feels heard and included to achieve cohesion.
