The Secret to Long-Term CEO Success

Every successful company will arrive at a crossroads that presents the CEO with new leadership challenges. They may appear when the company reaches a certain size, grows beyond an existing customer set or expands to multiple locations. Any of these challenges can create the need to manage the company differently.

Long-term CEO success depends on the ability to anticipate and prepare for those challenges, at times by ceding some responsibility and authority to executives with more expertise in a given area than you have, says David Nadler, vice chairman of global business consultancy Marsh & McLennan and co-author of Organizational Architecture: Designs for Changing Organizations and Competing by Design: The Power of Organizational Architecture. “If you do the right things as you grow larger, you get people on your team who ideally should be better at their jobs than you are,' he says.

Navigating those transitions can force a reassessment of your own role. If you're a technologist at heart, you may face a hard choice: hire executives to take charge of marketing and management or shift your work away from your strengths to remain in control of those areas.

Nadler suggests making an honest assessment, in concert with a trusted advisor, of which role you'll perform most productively. Do you have the capacity to lead and manage a larger organization? Or are you, for example, a great scientist but a mediocre leader? In Nadler's experience, CEOs too often fix their attention on keeping the title and role, even when that runs counter to their greatest talents and the role they most enjoy.

Executives can acquire new skills by investing time and energy in continued professional development. You and your advisor must assess that option in terms of both current needs and the demands that future growth will place on you. It's essential to re-examine these questions “at minimum every two years' and to continue to “think ahead to where the job becomes different,' Nadler says. “You have to recognize that there are limits to how much people change. Personality doesn't change. Some of your fundamental skill sets don't change that much.'

It's your company, so allow personal happiness to be a factor, too. “Many people put themselves into situations where they're quite unhappy and not successful by doing what they think they want versus thinking about what they really love doing and what they do well,' he says. 

If you'd be happier continuing as the head of R&D but still need to be acknowledged as the chief executive, think creatively about how you can restructure the company's leadership. You could be Executive Chairman and Chief Scientist, for example, while a more managerial executive holds the title of CEO. 

“Try to create a role that you will enjoy and that you can do well,' Nadler says. “Ultimately, that's what's going to make the firm successful.'