Inaccessible
Pinnacle?
Mountains, missteps and meaning-making in a CEO’s first season
Pinnacle?
Mountains, missteps and meaning-making in a CEO’s first season.
Mountains.
They’re a familiar trope in leadership literature – and doubtless for good reason. Clichés persist, after all, because they capture an essence of something, some truth to be conveyed that might otherwise be hard to grasp.
Mountains are vast, often perilous, shifting yet enduring, intimidating yet alluring, humbling, and to many almost irresistible. To conquer a mountain is to stretch the boundaries of our experience and our knowing – the view from the top yielding new perspectives and new lands, and the climb to get there testing and challenging us, tearing and laying down new muscle fibres, pushing us to the edge of our capabilities, and requiring us to bring to bear all our accumulated experience and expertise.
In the course of our research, we spoke to a diverse group of more than twenty CEOs in public companies, PE and privately held multinationals, in a variety of sectors spanning consumer to financial services – all of whom, we knew, had something important to teach us.
Across sector, gender and tenure, almost without exception, at some point in our conversation every single CEO reached for a mountain-related metaphor.
We talked about maps, narrow paths, hard slog and unexpected weather.
We talked about Everest, about sheer drops and mountain tops… and about the whole other mountain that lies beyond the one you think you’re climbing.
We asked these weather-beaten, summit-seasoned climbers to tell us what it was like to embark on this journey for the first time. What surprised them? What did they learn? And, crucially, what do they wish they had known at the outset that might help those embarking on their own climb?
Here is what we learned.
Why
Climb?
The first thing we learned is that the majority of those we spoke to did not have a grand life plan to be a CEO. Indeed, the majority didn’t intend to embark on this journey even when they were in the role immediately prior. One declined the role twice, another was brought in on a botched succession promise, still another was concerned about his credibility amongst operators having come from a functional role. Across everyone we spoke to, though, three themes were clear – a love of their business, a sense of challenge, and a desire to make a difference. One said simply,
I was in a business I loved and the opportunity emerged,
And another,
All I knew was that I wanted to build a world class business. I just loved the business.
For some, the overriding rationale in the end was akin to that clarion call to mountaineers through the ages – those who climb a mountain simply “because it is there”¹…
It was all a test I had to pass. This was the next thing in front of me and I felt I had to take it on.
… or for the sheer joy of the challenge,
I liked the idea of the ultimate responsibility – it was the pinnacle and it felt a natural progression.
For others, the determining factor was about impact, and the opportunity to make a difference to the business,
to its staff, and to huge communities of suppliers and consumers,
I think maybe I can do something here.
Whatever the motivation for each member of the group, what emerged was a picture of profoundly human leaders. Brilliant but messy. Flawed and not a little scared of what might lie ahead of them –
You can talk about Steve Jobs or whoever, but your average CEO is highly capable, racked with insecurity about whether we are up to it, resent the constant pressure but secretly appreciate the elevated world view you get…
Future CEOs, it transpires, are not a breed apart. They are people who like a challenge, who want to make a difference, who are a tangle of contradictory emotions and motivations and a good dose of self doubt.
In taking on their first CEO role, these entirely normal human beings each embarked on a journey which, for most, quickly upended their expectations.
WHAT ARE THE DEFINING FEATURES?
Any cursory review of the plethora of podcasts and books out there will tell you what a CEO does, so everyone broadly knew what they were signing up to – but what is the actual lived experience on the ground? Our group told us about four defining features of their roles; features that had initially taken them by surprise. How quickly and competently they got the measure of these and figured out a strategy for dealing with them was a key determining factor in their future success in the role.
Defining Feature 1 —
It’s all consuming
I wasn’t prepared for how truly and utterly all-consuming the role is
Without exception, everyone in the group spoke to us about the sheer scale of being CEO. One explained that he had been confident that he had the measure of the role, having been in the CFO role in his organisation working closely alongside the previous incumbent – only to be entirely blindsided by the step-change in scale, pace and complexity.
I now see that prior to becoming CEO I was insulated from so many of the factors that make being a CEO unique. And you realise that you don’t get taught most of the role that you are about to take on – and ironically it’s the hardest role you’ll have.
The job felt 80% different to anything I had done before. And I’d been a main Board director since I was 34 before I took it on. The impact on your family. You are always on. You always have to perform – your brand and performance is always under scrutiny and has an impact on your reputation. You have no time. Everyone looks to you – all the time.
We heard about avalanches of emails, how easy it is to be subsumed and controlled by the institutional norms and processes, and about the overwhelming sense of responsibility that comes with assuming full and total accountability for an organisation and all its people.
You are not going for a demanding hike. Prepare yourself for K2.
Defining Feature 2 —
The weather’s here already
One of our gripes about the myriad ‘first 100 days’ transition guides out there is that they all appear to presume a standing start amidst clear blue skies – a light breeze, great visibility, the route ahead clearly marked and guides on every corner.
In reality, beginning a CEO role can often feel more akin to being helicopter-dropped onto a narrow ridge in a blizzard. Several of the group assumed their role amidst a crisis,
In my first week, my audit chair warned me, ‘This whole thing is going to blow’…
but even for those for whom there was no existential crisis, there was always urgency, challenge and uncertainty. There were always key projects mid-flight, market expectations and fluctuations and an acute need to be able to respond in the moment to the organisation’s urgent clamour to be led, with minimal time for data gathering or reflection.
Defining Feature 3 —
It’s noisy up there
To be on a mountain of any magnitude is to be exposed to the incessant roar of the wind. Everest famously echoes with crashes and creaks at night as glaciers shift and crack as the temperature drops.
Our group described an equivalent incessant cacophony as a constant companion in their roles. Issues being elevated, individual agendas being pursued, markets responding, shareholders asking questions. It can be acutely difficult to discern amidst the noise which are the creaks and voices worth paying attention to. The quiet whispers that contain vital insights risk being drowned out by busyness, politicking and other peoples’ priorities.
You have to be on your guard for the people who want to be your new friends – who want your access and fees… it’s relatively easy to tell who those people are.
Defining Feature 4 –
There’s a whole other mountain
Mt. Fuji is specially imposing when it is reflected upside down on the glassy surface of Lake Ashi. But by standing on the top of Mt. Fuji of an evening or morning, one may sometimes see the shadow of Mt. Fuji inverted above the mountain. It is only seen in fine weather and when there is much moisture in the air. The shadow will be dim and small at first, but it gradually grows clearer and larger until it appears perfectly clear.²
– We Japanese, Vol. 2, Sakai Atsuharu, Fujiya Miyanoshita Hotel, 1937
This image of mountain upon mountain, serves as a powerful illustration of one of the most striking observations to emerge from our discussions with CEOs:
Progressing through a large organisation, running increasingly large businesses… you’re making constant progress but entirely failing to see that while you are getting towards the top of your pyramid, there is a symmetrical inverted pyramid sitting on top of you – beginning with the Chair and the Board, the capital markets, the media, suppliers and counterparties, government… And you have zero preparation for dealing with that pyramid…
Several of the group shared this sentiment. They described having been so focused on running the business that they were initially blindsided by this whole other mountain. Now, having settled into their roles, this is ultimately the mountain that many of them end up paying most attention to – a mountain that was previously just a shimmering reflection in their peripheral vision.
I should have thought more about my relationship with the Board and been more formal and structured in thinking through how I wanted that relationship to be rather than just letting it unfold… With hindsight I’d like to have contracted much more clearly about what is the Board doing and what am I doing as CEO.
There is also, however, a whole other mountain in a different sense. In his book, The Second Mountain, David Brooks defines the second mountain as a season of life that is about shedding the ego and losing the self. For several of our group, an acute sense of higher purpose, deep commitment to community, and a burning desire to make an impact are the driving forces behind their decision to take on a CEO role and inform every aspect of how they seek to execute it.
What are the lessons?
If these, then, are the key observations from our group of CEOs, what are the lessons that can be extracted? What are the actionable insights, the things they wish they had known when they were starting out? There are six.
Lesson 1 –
Preparation is everything
I’d have been swept away if I hadn’t come in prepared and clear about my priorities – it is so noisy and so all consuming…
Every leader knows this. But it bears repeating. Preparation is everything. Or rather, the correct preparation is everything.
If you are about to be dropped onto a sheer slope in a blizzard, you’d better be prepared. There will be no time to get your bearings when you land, so you need to have studied the terrain ahead of time and understand what your options are. This enables you to be clear-eyed, agile and responsive when you hit the ground.
Similarly, if you’ve heard tales of a mythical second mountain that suddenly looms into view, you’d better be prepared.
You need intense preparation before you come into the role, with your predecessor, advisors, other CEOs, your Board. I spoke to many of those but I spoke to them about running the business, not about running the Board, capital markets, media… [with hindsight] I’d have spent much more time understanding the perspective of those parties.
Lesson 2 –
Health is (also) everything
Be conscious of your own delicacy.
Our group of CEOs were unanimous, bordering on fervent, in emphasising the critical importance of health in all its aspects – physical, mental, emotional and relational.
They spoke of the need to be physically strong – to enter the role “with an 8000m climber mentality” and to build momentum and consistency around maintaining physical and mental health. One commented on the “loneliness and thin oxygen” that can come with the role and observed how mental and physical fitness helped them withstand this.
Some reflected that they had neglected diet and exercise in the early days in their role and had felt the adverse impact of this. They talked about the importance of keeping your most important personal relationships in good shape, of paying close attention and regularly and intentionally revisiting habits to ask whether they are fit for purpose and serve you well.
It sounds simplistic but TAKE YOUR HOLIDAYS, protect your personal life, create space to step back and clear your head. You need time to think and get above the fray and the noise. Time in nature was essential to me… you absolutely need time to recalibrate or you will fail.
One CEO we spoke with now has absolute mastery of this, having learned some hard lessons along the way. They have five distinct colour-coded diary slots in their diary simply called ‘wellness’. They describe these as the anchor and priority of their week –
Learn to enjoy and use space and time as a superpower. I’ve gone from time poverty to being time rich.
Lesson 3 –
Own your time and priorities
Every member of the group emphasised that clarity on priorities; being clear what only they as CEO can do (and doing those things only); and being ‘brutal’ with their calendar was vital in order to avoid being overrun and ineffectual.
Several acknowledged the magnetic force of being sucked into things around them that they knew something about, but that other people should have been doing –
Don’t solve it. Design the dynamics to solve it.
For some, this meant setting very clear boundaries, bright lines and expectations from the outset. Being clear on asks, being transparent, challenging received wisdom.
Those who had taken the opportunity to prep in advance of stepping into role, spoke of how clarity on their agenda, areas of focus, and “a bit of a vision for at least the first twelve months” served them incredibly well in helping them find their bearings in those early months.
There is a level of focus and clarity required to drown out the worst of the noise on the slope; an art to listening closely for the important creaks in the glacier while not being blown off course by the loudest voices. In particular, some of our group counselled to beware advisers – in particular, “how much activity advisers create for you and the deficit that creates.”
On the hardest mountains, climbers need to elevate and simplify. For CEOs, that starts with clarity on priorities and how one spends time.
Lesson 4 –
It’s a team sport
I drove the agenda, and set expectations and the timeframe. Everything else, absolutely everything else, was entirely down to the team.
Our group were all clear that “none of the magic happens until you have the A-team around you”. The corollary, many of the group also emphasised, is that once you do have such a team, the possibilities are likely beyond all expectations.
In talking about “their team”, our group were in fact talking about three distinct teams, all of which perform a slightly different function, and all of which are critically important.
Firstly, and most obviously, there is the ExCo – the CEO’s functional and operational direct reports who between them have overall responsibility for every aspect of the business.
Until you have the A team in your ExCo, you are nowhere.
Strikingly, this was one area where many of our group felt with hindsight that they could and should have been more decisive and moved faster.
With the benefit of hindsight I would have started with team and not with strategy. I would have said, ‘what is the very very best team I can put around me for the long term and then how do I lead that team to co-create the strategy.
I would say, go as fast as possible as nothing is going to fly without the right team around you. It’s better to have the right people around you in the wrong structure than to have the right structure and the wrong people.
Many of the group reported that it took two or three iterations in some roles to get the team right. Incoming CEOs should beware of retaining or promoting people based on seniority, tenure or past glories, or of being
distracted by optics. Anyone briefing against the strategy or the organisation should not be tolerated.
Having built an outstanding team, CEOs should prioritise building a high level of trust amongst the team and empowering and enabling them to deliver. Be open to challenging received wisdom around what that looks like – one of our group, charged with leading the turnaround of a (privately-held) business in crisis, restructured the business for a season such that she had seventeen direct reports – a far from conventional (or easy) approach but one that conferred intimacy and transparency, built trust and created proximity between strategic decision making and operational reality.
To support the CEO in building and empowering their ExCo, there is a second team, “Team CEO”. This team likely includes a Chief of Staff (a role many of our group regard as game-changing), perhaps a strategy office, an EA with a broad brief to be gatekeeper, eyes and ears on the ground, speech writer, etc.
This is a small, tight-knit core team who will get things done alongside the CEO. To mix our metaphors momentarily, if the ExCo is the football team, and the CEO the manager of that team, then one of our group described this team as “the coaching staff who can help me get more out of the business”.
Finally, there is the CEO’s personal support team. The eyes of this team face inward, focusing on the CEO and their needs. This team will include a partner or spouse, family and close friends, who bring the right level of understanding, humour and groundedness to bear. It should include a coach to support the CEO’s own development, and “a great PA who doesn’t say yes to everyone and truly understands your needs.”
Lesson 5 –
Everyone loves a good story
By the time you want to puke if you hear yourself say the same thing one more time – it’s only then that you might be landing a message
When leading a business at scale, perhaps the greatest gift a CEO can give the organisation is the gift of an exciting and true story, well told.
You’ve got to ask early on – what is going to get people out of bed in the morning?
A great CEO can sit amidst profound nuance and complexity and weave all of the threads together into a single golden cord – a simple and memorable narrative that will enable the entire organisation to make sense of things, to understand how their role and purpose fits within the wider organisational purpose, and to be motivated and enabled to move in the right direction and do the right things in the right way.
This is your high-vis jacket, your whistle, your headtorch your emergency flare – it has to be told in bright, bold brushstrokes – no one is admiring your fine detail and subtle shading at 8000 metres.
This all takes time and work and several iterations –
It took a long time to clarify, simplify and take hearts and minds with me… Never underestimate the power of communication.
Telling a compelling and consistent story is also once of the best ways our CEOs have found of managing and leveraging their ever-present ‘long shadow’. Many of our group talked about being acutely aware of the disproportionate weight that their words and actions carry across the whole organisation and the need to proactively manage this.
I never appreciated how people saw me. I call a spade a spade and didn’t always realise how demotivating that could be. You are on such a pedestal. There is a huge multiplier effect on your language and words. You have to really think about your messaging and how you speak to your colleagues…
‘Standing for something’ is essential – embodying and owning the story that you want your business to internalise, and thus allowing all of your words and actions to be interpreted in that light.
Lesson 6 –
Hold the rope lightly
You can only live the journey
Finally, and with all of that said, one might imagine that the prospect of assuming a first CEO role is extraordinarily daunting. One might understandably enter the fray fraught with anxiety and tightly clenched.
We advise a deep breath, a gentle loosening of your grip, and a decisive step forward into a role that every single one of the CEOs we spoke with is glad they took –
The paradox is that it is absolutely awful and absolutely fantastic at the same time
Those who most relish the journey are those who come into it knowing that they will face a lot of challenge and will have to change and grow. One of our group who has been in role for more than six years observes that the first couple of years are a steep learning curve and can feel a lot like just surviving. Beyond that, they say,
the ability to evolve in the role is huge – to really grow and develop
Meanwhile, there is a need to master one’s own perfectionism, to be patient, and to live in ambiguity – hard asks for most high achievers –
I could have fallen victim to real impatience in the early years – I didn’t listen enough and I didn’t create enough time to reflect and think. You’re not trained to do these things.
Many of our group have come to understand that they don’t need to have all the answers. They need simply to learn to ask the right questions – a very different way of being.
The CEOs in our group are testament to the notion that confidence comes with time – there’s a sense of easing into the role. Allow that to happen, they say, and don’t force it. There’s a posture that can be learned which involves creating clarity, setting high standards, being deeply devoted to the business and the team, and then “letting it come to you”.
I would advise go fast on team, don’t hesitate on talent, get yourself elevated as soon as possible and ask – what am I going to do here that will really drive this business forward, what will be my impact and how will I make money [for the company] to ensure I have licence to do the other stuff?
Many of the group observed that forcing short term outcomes is ultimately unsustainable and incompatible with building a truly great business for the long term.
Don’t be too focused on your share price. Don’t over promise. I made both these mistakes… It was the hubris of growth. We lost sight of the long term value creation and got sucked in to the short term delivery that analysts wanted. I should have stuck with what I knew in my bones…
Finally, with an eye firmly on that mountain beyond self, one of our group asks,
What would you do if you knew you were doing this role for a decade? How would you pace things? What might you be patient around? What would you build? Where would you be braver and bolder? Do those things.
Ever Onward
The lessons above are powerful, often timeless and some might even appear obvious. But, from our work with CEOs and senior executives we know how hard they can be to implement in practice. At Altair, we work with senior leaders at every stage of their climb, supporting and challenging them to make great decisions, do hard things, and achieve balance. We’d love to have a conversation about how we can help as you tackle your mountain.
Continue the conversation - home@altair.london
Endnotes
“The Inaccessible Pinnacle” (or the In Pinn) is the second highest peak in the Skye Cuillin, rising from the summit of Sgùrr Dearg. It is notorious for being the most difficult of the Munros to ascend.
“Because it is there” — This quote is attributable to the mountaineer George Mallory. When asked by a reporter why he wanted to climb Everest, Mallory purportedly replied, “Because it’s there.” The definitive biography of Mallory is ‘Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest’ by Wade Davis — a brilliant read, full of leadership lessons.
The most iconic images of Mount Fuji are taken across Lake Ashi, the crystal clear water reflecting the mirror image of the mountain. This image is known as Sakasa-Fuji, “Inverted Mount Fuji”. Architect Shigeru Ban used Sakasa-Fuji as inspiration for his design of the Mount Fuji World Heritage Centre, which itself is built in the shape of an inverted mountain, such that the shape of its own reflection in the pool outside is of a mountain ‘the right way up’.