Admit it, you want to make it to the top job: CEO. This is arguably one of the most difficult tasks on Earth: competition is fierce, incumbents hang on hard, aspirers have a one in ten thousands chances to make it. Yet, the one element that distinguishes the normal aspirers to becoming CEOs to those who make it is green Yes, I talk about how to do the job: better, faster, less sweat. And the information is cheap to come by – there are a few books that will offer you the information you need. The difficulty consists in choosing the right book, reading it and applying it’s know how.
Harvard Business Reviews “CEO” title gives you just that.
As with many other points, “CEO” was curated by HBR Press’s editors, who perused through hundreds of articles and extracted the most interesting and relevant ones. This collection of “best of CEO” articles makes no exception l. From titles such as “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy” to “Revisiting Your Core Business”, this articles collection will probably start to change the lenses through which you perceive the business world. As Harari mentions in “Homo Sapiens”, all modern methods economy is an abstract mind construct – yet, we are further ahead as a race more than we ever dreamed about. So why not take the race further and further?
Obviously yes – we all want to move our organizations ahead, create blue oceans and enormous value. There are two powerful combinations that lead to these objectives – a solid set of resources and putting those resources to good use. The second one is mostly the goal of this HBR title.
My favorite article from “HBR’s 10 Must Reads – CEOs” remains “Reinventing Your Business Model” by Mark Johnson, Clayton Christensen and Henning Kagermann. The key to leaping ahead has proven (in authors’ view) a great business model – which, as anything that grows, must be understood, adjusted and reinvented periodically. Sounds very simple – yet, the steps to get there are really complex. To be a successful company, it is critical to have and constantly improve on a CVP – customer value proposition. A strong CVP fulfills a need or solves a problem – and right there the companies start their journeys towards being the best in class. Whilst the steps take a relatively long horizon to implement, they are critical – especially in the super-disrupted world we are living in.
Unfortunately, the executives have to do much better – especially in this disrupted competitive landscape. This usually involves applying multiple strategies at multiple levels – with shorter and shorter time frames. Thus, ability to innovate must be complemented by a great team, constant execution and satisfying stakeholders – constantly.
This is why “Reinventing Your Business Model” is one of the great 12 articles within the book. Therefore, as we on doitinvest.com usually do with the great titles, we kindly invite you to buy and go through “HBR’s 10 Must Reads – CEOs”. I am pretty sure you will keep the book close and revisit it periodically. So… enjoy!