by Ian Duncan
The subject of this series of short articles is how CEO’s can use their corporate brand as an asset in helping them succeed in transforming and growing their organization. Use of brand in this context is a missed opportunity, and one which has never been more relevant. The series will cover why CEOs need help today, what they need help with, how brand fits in, how to deploy brand to do its job, and how to get started on the journey.
Why “brand” should even be on your agenda
The main premise of these articles is that something I’m calling “brand” (and more specifically your “corporate brand”) can do something big and important to help you deliver transformation and growth.
So, we need to dispense with the idea that “brand” here refers to things like “logos” and “websites” Sure, they’re components of the machinery of a “brand” but no-one would seriously suggest that they’re going help you do the transformation and growth job you’ve been hired for.
The terms “reputation” and “brand” are also often thrown about interchangeably, and, in a corporate context it’s easy to see them as one and the same. However, for now, let’s regard “reputation” is something that you don’t fully control, whereas your corporate brand is something that you can actively and purposefully shape and deploy to help deliver transformation and growth.
We’ll get into the details later – for now just keep an open mind and think of brand as an integral part of your transformation and growth strategy, and one that can help you pull some of the critical internal and external levers needed to deliver transformational change which grows the business.
Why now – the CEO job challenge
In researching these articles, I came across data which paints a picture of just how challenging the role of a CEO is becoming today. This is the start-point of identifying what brand needs to do to help you succeed. Here are some of the headlines, which I’m sure come as no surprise.
- High stakes: Data now shows how CEO success is heavily linked to the success of their organization (go figure!). This ratchets up the expectations of your role and points to the increasingly heavy burden of leadership that comes with it.
- The growth imperative: CEOs are very clear about the main thing they’re expected to deliver – “growth”. It’s the overriding priority of nearly two-thirds of CEOs surveyed by Gartner, and up in importance compared to a few years ago (see appendix). It’s growth of the organic variety that most CEOs are focused on and that’s where “Brand” can help.
- Strings attached: The growth agenda comes with ever more strings attached these days, including a growing emphasis on profitability and cost management, leveraging technology (AI anyone), keeping the troops happy and motivated, and putting the focus back on the customer. That’s quite a “balanced scorecard” of CEO performance.
- Time is getting short: Expectations these days come with impatience – reflected in shortening tenures of the C-suite. CEOs are given more time to deliver but less than they used to have – down from 8 years in 2016 to 6.9 years in 2020 according to Korn-Ferry. Couple that with only 18% of CEOs have prior experience in the role, and 25% coming from another industry and the pressure is clearly on.
The CEO personal challenge – the real balanced scorecard
CEOs have a tough job, and it’s in everyone’s interests that they’re successful. The caricature of the hard-driving laser-focused ruthless risk-taker is prevalent – there’s even data which estimates that 8-12% of CEOs possess “psychopathic traits” – but it turns out that CEOs are human like the rest of us, and their success depends on how well they integrate (or “balance”) the demands of the job with managing the personal and psychological resources they need to perform their role.
Leading is the new smoking
When the professional demands of the job get out of whack with the required personal and psychological resources the consequences can be dire, for both the individual and the organization. A growing body of evidence shows that being a CEO can be, putting it mildly “a bit of a downer” or putting it more simply “bad for your health”. Here’s a sample of the literature out there.
“Drug use and addiction among high-earning professionals”
“CEO Stress, Aging, and Death. The long-term effects of managerial stress on aging & mortality”
“Stress is the silent killer of top-performing CEOs; here’s how to deal with it”
Beyond the eye-catching headlines here’s some equally attention-grabbing stats
- Addiction: An estimated 10% of top executives are “drug or alcohol-impaired”, and the C-suite are significantly less likely to seek help for mental health problems
- Premature ageing: CEOs in industries and organizations experiencing “distress shocks” following the 2008 Great Recession (defined as a 30% median stock price decline over a 2-year period) had visibly aged by 1 year compared to their peers
- Mortality: Researchers have extrapolated this into an overall decrease in life-expectancy of 1.2 years – equivalent to the “mortality effect” of smoking to the age of 30
- Death: CEOs who contend with strict corporate governance and the scrutiny that goes with it fare even worse – they die significantly earlier
Stress and its impact is certainly not unique to the C-suite, and most CEOs are well-compensated for the burden they carry. The broader point here is the risk exposure to the whole organization if a CEO is rendered unable to function.
The prescription for success – it’s a mind game
Experts recommend that CEOs “buffer the burnout risk” of high job demands by finding ways to “disconnect”, “step away” and “switch off” from the all-consuming nature of the job. Some of the recommended ways of doing this run counter to the established caricature – getting more sleep rather than making a virtue of doing the job on the minimum amount and finding “serious leisure pursuits” rather than making the job the be-all-and-end-all.
So, whilst we might have some fun with images of tucking in our respective CEOs for nap time or taking their call whilst in mid skydiving trajectory, the main benefit to the business from all this is a serious one – that a “calm mind is a clear mind”. And we surely want our CEOs to have a clear mind as they are entrusted with decisions which impact us all.
What’s brand got to do with it?
You may be sitting there thinking “well this has all been very informative but what’s it got to do with anything remotely connected with brand”. And if brand doesn’t meet the needs you have as a CEO in today’s operating environment, then you’d be right to pay it little attention. Those needs start with impacting the drivers of growth and the necessary transformational stuff behind it. If brand can make a contribution here (and it can) then it becomes a valuable tool in your CEO toolbox which not only enhances your job performance but goes further to enhance your life.
For any of this to be remotely possible we need to think of corporate brand differently – both in terms of what you need it to do and how. This is the subject of the next articles in the series. For now, I’ll leave you with the set-up of the agenda for brand in terms of things it can impact to help drive growth and transformation. These come in the form of 3 “big rocks” and 5 “change levers”.
The next article argues that unleashing brand to do its work is as much about using it to create the right mindset in the organization. With this mindset the job of leading transformation and growth becomes a whole lot easier. Without it you may find yourself on the wrong side of some of the stats we saw earlier.