Advice for CEOs

Charlie Pilkington, Founder and Managing Member of NorthStar Technologies, often looks at the framed quote from Gary Comer, Founder of Land’s End:

I’ve got my thumb pressed on the lighter with hand held high for the CEO/Founders of fast-growth companies. In his fascinating and sobering book, The 4th Turning, William Strauss chronicles the patterns of America’s economic history. He describes these patterns as cyclical “Turnings” that have occurred in our economy since the first ringing of the Liberty Bell:

Harvard Business School states that over 90% of strategies fail. The authors describe in their study that “the ability to execute strategy was more important than the strategy itself.” Failure to execute not only lowers performance, it also prevents a company from breaking through a perilous growth inflection point. We call that point No Man’s Land.

Many CEOs and founders enter a stage of growth where their business is too big to be small, and too small to be big. They’re running as fast as they can and yet the old way of running their business doesn’t seem to work anymore. Do any of these sound familiar? If so you’re probably stuck in No Man’s Land:

Newport Board Group clients, Mayra Jimenez and Ivan Rincon, are two of the smartest entrepreneurs I know. My company has worked with over 500 fast-growth companies in the past three years. Over 95% of their leadership teams are are out of sync on their value proposition.