Play Musical Chairs with Your CEO group

Admittedly, this Food for Thought article is most pertinent to Presidents and CEOs of companies, who are probably members of a CEO group like TEC, Vistage, YPO, EO, Gazelles and the like. A significant fraction of our leadership does fall in that category. If you do, you probably belong to a group that meets regularly, often facilitated by a Chair, with other members that have become trusted advisors for you, and with whom you share openly about your company and even about yourself. We offer this thought on the basis of those assumptions.

Imagine at one of your group meetings your Chair asks everybody to stand up, move over one seat and sit down, and then suggests that you spend the next week running the company of the person whose seat you are now occupying.

For a week you abandon your responsibilities in your own company and instead go to work at your friend's company as its acting President/CEO. You run that firm and all its daily operations for a whole week. You talk to the executives and employees there asking - what might appear to them as basic and ill-informed - questions about what they do and why they do it the way they do it. You ask them if they thought of doing it a different way. You force them to explain to you the rationale behind their policies, practices, decisions, etc. A week of questioning by a third party - who has the acting CEO hat - is going to create a lot of new thought in the staff of that company.

Can you really do this? Is it safe and prudent to hand the keys to your company to another individual?

But, is the individual really a stranger? After all, do you not lean on this individual as a trusted advisor in your CEO group? Imagine the value of those unbiased questions and the insight of a trusted outsider? Imagine its value in a context where the real boss is not present to defend or criticize. Conversely, imagine the value your own company's staff will get in the reciprocal arrangement.

Even if you do not do this with the whole CEO group, it might be possible to do this by mutual swaps between two to four CEOs.

In fact, doing this periodically with different companies - say, the group makes a practice of doing this once a year with different rotational assignments - will provide new and distinct value each time around.

What harm can happen?

Will the acting CEO make some senseless decision that sinks the company? Will the acting CEO become a rebel-rouser that leaves your executive team or employees disgruntled? Are you concerned that the acting CEO might make you look deficient? Will activities in your own company come to a grinding halt because you are gone for a week leaving your company with an acting CEO? We believe each of these concerns can be adequately mitigated. Probably the biggest concern is the uncertainty it creates in your mind. But uncertainty is precisely the ingredient for radical thought!

Food for Thought is our way of sharing interesting concepts on corporate leadership and management with others who might find it useful. The thoughts offered are intended to be controversial and thought provoking. They are intended to help our readers intentionally realize their potential, what we call Potentionality.