Across all the clients I’m working with, the books I’m reading and the news stories I’m tracking, I have a strong sense of something new birthing in business.
Sometimes that birthing process is chaotic and hard, and sometimes quite beautiful.
I had an experience of the beautiful scenario just last week: a business on sound footing; well-led; smart, decent people across the board; a big idea they are incubating; close relationships with one another; a hunger for growth; high trust. They have achieved a huge amount as a business already over the past decade – multiple exits, global expansion, and pioneering products that have truly caught on.
This kind of business ‘wellness’ is not common so I reminded myself to pay particular attention to the moment and to observe closely what kinds of questions, conversations, and aspirations played out.
What I noticed in the CEO was a sense that something new was emerging for his business, but him not knowing exactly what it was, what to call it, or how to describe it. The offsite felt full of possibility but unclear of the path forward.
This sense of something emerging is shared by many conscious business leaders out there – I can feel it in most of my CEO clients. The current blueprint for a vast majority of the businesses of the world is now 125 years old and is losing steam. The aware business leaders, particularly CEOs, know this to be true but they don’t know where they should be headed, or what the next iteration of business looks like.
This is where curiosity, a pioneering spirit and the willingness to experiment come into play. The transition of business is well underway but the way forward is unclear. Nobody knows for certain.
This is a very important take-out for CEOs: your world is shifting fast and you need to keep up with the pace of change but you probably don’t know what the next milestone looks like. Many CEOs that I’ve come across choose to ignore this problem and – for a time – get away with it. But sooner or later, that same CEO will find themselves playing off the back foot and scrambling to make up the lost time.
The forward-leaning, curious, questioning CEO (which the CEO of the aforementioned business certainly is) will experience a significant payoff for looking into this unclear future and taking a position. Regardless of whether their view is vindicated, they will still have nudged their business down a fruitful path.
So the provocations I share with you are:
- What does ‘beyond business’ look like for you?
- What does ‘beyond leadership’ look like for you?
- What does your next evolution as a person look like?
- What does this personal evolution mean for your CEO journey?
- What curiosities do you have that are asking to be fed?
- What fears do you have that need airing and facing up to?
I have a pretty strong sense of the future of business and will be sharing these ideas with you over the coming months. I suspect that some of these ideas will be considered quite ‘out there’, which historically has made me cautious about sharing them publicly. But I am so convinced of this directionality and am so excited about how it will enhance business globally that I feel compelled to give my ideas oxygen.