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IBM 2010 Chief Executive Officer Study

July 6th, 2010 | Leadership, Strategy

Reference: IBM | 2010 Chief Executive Officer Study

Lots of good bits in this survey. It is quite long though. Here are some of my favourite thoughts.

Standout CEOs expressed little fear of re-examining their own creations or proven strategic approaches. In fact, 74 percent of them took an iterative approach to strategy, compared to 64 percent of other CEOs. Standouts rely more on continuously re-conceiving their strategy versus an approach based on formal, annual planning.

Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realize their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas, and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.

….. and many more ….

** Standouts are defined as: Long-term performance included four-year operating margin compound annual growth rate from 2003 to 2008. Short-term performance included one-year operating margin growth rate from 2008 to 2009. This allowed us to identify “Standout” organizations that were able to improve operating margins both long term and short term.

Reference: IBM | 2010 Chief Executive Officer Study


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    • Ccrandell

      This is a great excerpt you extracted from the IBM report. The collaborative process between product managers and the executive suite isn’t always particularly fruitful, but this can give product managers some perspective on why executives seem to be always changing their mind – changes that introduce hardships on the product managers who are adapting the product in real-time. On the flip side CEOs need more visibility into things like how much resources new product features will cost, instead of flying blind on product strategy decisions. When product managers try to tell the C-suite they don’t have the resources for a feature, it can just sound like complaining – these conversations need to be supported with data and analysis.

      -Christine Crandell, Accept Software

    • Ccrandell

      This is a great excerpt you extracted from the IBM report. The collaborative process between product managers and the executive suite isn’t always particularly fruitful, but this can give product managers some perspective on why executives seem to be always changing their mind – changes that introduce hardships on the product managers who are adapting the product in real-time. On the flip side CEOs need more visibility into things like how much resources new product features will cost, instead of flying blind on product strategy decisions. When product managers try to tell the C-suite they don’t have the resources for a feature, it can just sound like complaining – these conversations need to be supported with data and analysis.

      -Christine Crandell, Accept Software