Think like a CEO

..So you have been working for more than 4-5 years in the corporate world; some of you have been working in the middle management rung, but the common refrain is, feeling stagnated, you feel that there is no action happening, getting bored (or frustrated) of mundane things you have been doing, more are less are de-motivated (& if things don’t change for better, you could be de-moralized too!)

Right??

If that is the case, the good part is, you are not alone. There are millions of professionals feeling the similar pangs, though the remedy is not that difficult!

Allow me to explain.

In the current work, do you ever get the feeling of ownership? Did you, on your own / proactively (without anybody else asking) work late to complete some urgent task / proposal / program or worked for few hours on weekend from home? (and I’m talking of pre-lockdown era! 😊) Do you feel attached to the work? Do you take pride in whatever little team you’re leading?

Mostly, the answers will be in negative. If that is the case, you need to reorient yourself.

Yes, you need to start thinking like a CEO!  (& No, but don’t rush to HR to ask for corner office and or executive assistant! 😊) .

When I say, think like a CEO, try to take a bird’s eye view of your work / your organization from 10,000 ft above the ground. Try to make sense of all the business units/departments. Try to see the big picture. Don’t think of yourself as a mere spoke of a big wheel. Instead of moaning say, ‘what-I-am-doing-in-this-migration-project’, find out how it is important for the customer & for your organization (like in the given example, you’re enabling  customer not only saving money in capital investment of hardware by moving onto Cloud but also in taking advantage of scalability of Cloud) & you will understand the importance of your contribution). Find out how the organization makes money (Order to cash process), see who the vendors are, find out the employee count.  Find out what metrics/KPIs your organization uses. There will be some key words / terms specific to every organization. Find out what those are, find out their meanings & you start getting a new perspective.  (Listed organization do publish financial statements on internet, find out & try to read the balance sheet, P&L statement. It is not that difficult. Even if you find out the operating revenue & operating expenses & the line items underneath, it is a great beginning!).  Observe CEO (or rather, CXOs/Sr. leadership), how they communicate, their body language, the confidence they exude, the energy, positivity they radiate.  (And I’m not asking to follow them blindly or to idolize them but to get inspired, get charged)

Once you start taking above steps, you’re getting into the groove; you are molding yourself to think like a CEO.  Supplementary reading (Eco Times / CNBC etc.) would provide you a lot more info about the verticals, how a particular industry is performing, what are the common pain points of a particular industry & how the industry champions are facing it etc.  You need not understand full 100%; even if you understand 10% of it, it would still help in changing the perspective, changing the thinking.

If you’re working in IT industry, are you aware that labor cost is its biggest cost component? But that is not the case for say, automobile company where material cost is the biggest cost component.  If you’re working in hotel or hospitals, occupancy is the key metrics.  Again, if you’re an IT professional, find out the gross yield per employee (simple formula – Revenue divided by Total No. of employees). Then you will also realize why IT companies want to move away from the linear model.

Once this thinking starts developing, you are bound to work differently, however small your team could be.  You would be more energetic, would be liking to go to office, to accomplish things (& not for the sake of your home loan EMI!) You would be taking genuine interests in your team associates, would be taking the end-to-end ownership of the project/s, talking to client/client’s project manager more frequently,  hearing the feedback/complaints, trying to do the course-correction,  would have a better pulse on the billing / collection, sniffing escalations & mitigating them in the bud!

And believe me, if you start doing above things, within a few months (or maximum, a couple of quarters), you could be the top performer in your team/BU/organization.

Continue delivering a spirited performance for a few years and you are bound to think one day, “Hey, why should I do all this for someone else and that too for so many years? Let me be the boss of my own little organization!”

And voila… an entrepreneur is born!!