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I find myself often wondering what keeps successful CEOs awake at night, hoping to tap into the kernels of knowledge and wisdom they house in tackling the challenges and opportunities of modern business.  It’s one of my first questions when interviewing or meeting with them at a client visit or industry function as I feel it gives me instant insight into their central makeup – their DNA no less.

And I see that this very topic is finding its way into more mainstream press of late, supported by formal surveys,  so I thought I’d share some of my findings which indicate that there are 4 core areas of pain or angst for our corporate leaders. I hope you find this useful since, to my mind, this is a surely a road to that next “transformation” project, IT purchase, offshoring agreement… And that may be useful information indeed.

Attraction & Retention Of Highest Quality People

All interviews, surveys and anecdotal evidence I can muster point consistently to attracting and retaining quality people as being the No. 1 priority and ongoing concern for successful CEOs.  The Captains Of Industry know only too well the importance and difficulty of building functional executive teams as this is arguably the only sustainable point of differentiation for the Enterprise.   And CEOs are pushing this message down the org. chart with a recent LinkedIn survey of 4,125 talent recruiting decision makers across 31 countries stating conclusively that “Quality is most valuable hiring metric.” I’ll resist the temptation to labour this point given I’ve wrapped my entire career around this very portent!

Globalisation

The interconnectedness of the world and the forces of globalisation now mean CEOs are truly on the boil 24×7 so now there’s simply no time for sleep!  Labour arbitrage, outsourcing/offshoring opportunities, follow-the-sun customer service delivery models, foreign exchange risks, capital and demographic shifts and the knowledge that your next competitor could very well come from the most remote, non-obvious corner of the planet are just some of the new world order considerations that make for an average day at the office for the modern CEO.  I do take my hat off to these people….

IT Security

This appears to rank consistently high as a major concern for CEOs and another reason to lose valuable sleep. The cloud computing revolution is well and truly in motion with utility-based IT solutions being a no-brainer v’s the very tired, very expensive traditional on-premise delivery model.  But the horror stories of IT Security breaches from data hosted off-shore (because it was cheaper!) do still  appear in the press sending a shudder through the hearts and minds of those who were responsible to go the cloud route, signed off by the CEO of course.  Yes, having your business in the cloud is still unnerving for the CEO but the cost benefits cannot be ignored so it’s a tough road to navigate.

Social Media

Whilst CEOs have been busily acquiring the skills and knowledge required to maintain relevance in the tech-savvy operating environment, they are still terrified of that social media catastrophe that is only ever just around the corner.  The United Airlines guitar disaster from a few years ago rammed home to CEOs the power of social media to destroy a brand, overnight, and they’ve been overcompensating ever since.  In a positive for customer service at large, CEOs have recognised that the Customer is truly King and that actually delivering excellence in customer service is complex and expensive, but necessary, and not about simply telling everyone everything was OK via slick spin-doctoring.   Customers will walk and talk and CEOs are now finally listening (as opposed to sleeping).

Every CEO is different and most CEOs will have excellent coping strategies for much of this sort of thing. But next time you find it hard to sleep, spare a thought for the lot of the modern CEO as you can be sure they’ll be burning the midnight candle as well.

Over a career spanning 21 years, Greg Tanna has established himself as an executive recruitment leader in the APAC Customer Contact/BPO/ICT/Consulting domain.