Step up before trying to fly: Advice for first-time CEOs

Ascending to the role of chief executive officer can be a daunting prospect. There are major step changes to make and skills to be honed. When you’re CEO, more is expected of you – and more is at stake. And for the first time, there’s just you – in the solitary role at the top of the house, with no direct peers within the business. It’s a lonely place to be.

It would be useful to have a trusted advisor on hand to guide you through those first few weeks and months. In the absence of a personal CEO guru, we’ve used our global experience in successfully placing hundreds of chief executives to distill our best advice for those moving up to the top spot – supported by invaluable insight from Heidrick & Struggles CEO, Tom Monahan, who has been a CEO at both publicly traded and PE-backed companies for nearly two decades.

What stepping up to CEO means

As an executive taking on your inaugural CEO position, you’ll typically have run a business unit or function previously, perhaps as general manager, chief financial officer or chief operating officer. While these positions provide valuable experience, the step up to CEO requires a shift to a wider, overarching perspective that can initially be hard to achieve. In light of this, it’s crucial to ‘know what you don’t know’ and identify how you need to grow to succeed as CEO.

“Every aspiring CEO that I coach gets the same lecture when they get their first CEO role,” says Tom. “You think you can fly when you become CEO because we built an Iron Man suit and put you in it. But don’t go straight to the top of the building and jump off: the suit can fly, you cannot.”

As well as perspective, there are additional skillsets to be acquired. As a newly minted CEO, you won’t typically have held an enterprise-wide role; had extensive interaction with the media, analysts, or the board; or overseen full P&L, full risk management, or full strategy formulation and execution.

“In my first CEO role, I had been an officer of the company and a board member since inception, and even I was surprised by some of the areas that now reported to me: treasury, tax compliance, proxy advisor management – the list is endless,” reveals Tom.

And remember: what got you here won’t necessarily get you there. You will need to transform into a different type of leader, one who can lead through others, be decisive and act fast, as well as one who listens and takes people along with you. Agility is at the heart of adapting at pace to the demands of your new role.

Prepare yourself for the top job

Before you step into the top office on day one, you need to equip yourself to meet the rigors of being CEO.

Assemble your support network. Identify the members of your personal cabinet. People who you can trust, who know you well, who understand the challenges of the task you’re taking on, and who will give you honest advice.

Plan – and be ready to adjust. Draw up a focused strategy for the first 10, 30 and 100 days of your new role. Be prepared to seek regular feedback, and to shift and adjust your plan accordingly.

Practice self-knowledge. Be objective about what you are already good at and what you need to improve on. What are your strengths and where will you need support? What have you been hired or promoted to provide or achieve? And what are you less good at, and need to work on?

Manage your energy. Improving and maintaining your physical health and mental wellness before becoming CEO is key because once you get there, resilience will be essential. Make sure you ringfence time for self-care, for exercise, for family. 

Move fast on your team. Establishing a solid triumvirate of CEO-CHRO-CFO, plus GC, underpins all effective leadership transitions. Once you move into the job, aim to get the core personnel right. We’ve yet to work with a new CEO who regretted moving fast on their team, so make key appointments quickly and strategically.

If you’re not in a position to establish your own team initially, strive to build effective working relationships with incumbent executives from day one, with everyone clear on their roles and how you expect them to support each other. Key to this is understanding the details of how each role functions and the value it brings to the executive committee.

“This is particularly true of first-time CEOs who do not come from the corporate officer functions,” points out Tom. “They may have been chief operating officers or business unit GMs. Consequently, they may have an incomplete understanding of everything the CFO or CHRO does, and as a result, a big chunk of what those officers do is invisible to, or even undervalued by, new CEOs.”

The next step is to finesse your wider team. Consider the context of what you were hired for – whether it was growth, M&A, divestment – and assemble the right personnel for the next phase in the business’s development. To achieve this, you’ll need the CHRO to advise on the baseline capabilities of the current leadership, both technical and behavioral, so you can get the right people on the bus, aligned on purpose, strategy, and deliverables.

Think broadly across borders and boundaries. As CEO, you will have a more expansive landscape to work on, and many more stakeholders to work with. To navigate this shift successfully, it’s important from the start to invest time in areas you are less familiar with – whether that’s investor relations, media interactions, dealing with communities, or meeting with unions.

Explore your new domain. Don’t hide at HQ – get out and meet the customers, users, and employees in order to understand the business at every level. And ask questions, such as: what’s the one thing you want to change around here? And what’s stopping you from changing it? This is the most effective way to understand what’s really happening in the business at every level.

Use your board wisely. The relationship between board chair and CEO is foundational to your success. You need to set expectations with, and get feedback from, the chair at an early stage. Then invest in creating a trusting relationship with the entire board, bearing in mind that they are all individuals with different priorities and experiences.

“I always find the hardest part of managing a board is going from having one boss to more than seven, each with their own biases, perspectives, backgrounds, and tenure with the company,” says Tom. "Cementing your relationship with each of them will make your position as CEO far stronger."

There is no value, however, in having a board that always agrees with you. Work to ensure the board is strong, independent, and functioning well, then use it to provide support, balance, and insight where you need it.

From your first day as CEO, your aim should be to shape a legacy. Think from the outset about what you want to achieve and get the board, the executive committee, and your wider team onside to help you drive the necessary progress.