4 days as a CEO for One Month. How has it influenced me?

This adventure of being Sweden's CEO for one month at The Adecco Group - a Fortune 500 company- is everything and nothing of what I expected. Through this article, I would like to share with you my recent pondering. I hope it prompts discussion.

What does a CEO do?

Have you been in a managing position on any level? Analysing data, developing presentations, distributing work and taking decisions? It is pretty much the same no matter the level, because, what else is there to do? What struck me is there being no magic, only hard and focused work with big leverage.

How to lead digitally through uncertainty?

In a few months, business-as-usual has been thrown out the window and the soft data generated from face-to-face interaction is lost. All to based decisions on is hard data. Make sure to invest time and resources into generating data from all business areas and that it is accessible and interpretable to everyone needing it for decisions. Moreover, block time for value-creating and value-realising work. There are always meetings to attend - you must be an expert in prioritising activities.

Connecting the dots

Curiosity reveals the opportunities, connections between the dots, that develop your business. A significant part of integrating innovation into business is about sacrifice. Meaning, you must sacrifice the old innovations to allow new ones. This requires courage. A leader must have the courage to take responsibility for what should remain and what should be sacrificed. Do you see the relationship between curiosity and courage via sacrifice, too?

Finally, I have pondered on the difference between self-confidence and self-esteem. Confidence, meaning the trust in my ability to perform well. Esteem, meaning my experienced self-worth after mistakes. I believe now that you will dare to reach further with high self-esteem, because your inevitable mistakes will not devalue you. Invest time and resources in befriending yourself. With social media, the glorified facades of lives and peer-evaluation, I believe my generation’s greatest challenge is the lack of self-esteem. Thus, my goal is to empower the esteems around me. That is my half-year’s resolution, which I just made up.