Be Your Own CEO

I like to think of myself as the CEO of Eric Sim Consulting, a firm with only one staff member: me. I consider the companies I’ve worked for not as my employers but as my “clients”, who pay me a “consulting fee” rather than a salary for my time and services. When I’m in a consultancy mindset, my motivations are different to those of an employee.

Imagining myself as a CEO means I want to build long-term relationships with my “clients”, so I agree to do work that’s not strictly within my job scope, such as organizing events and cross-selling other departments’ products. This may take me away from my main job, but it’s good for my “client” relationships, so it could open up new opportunities in the future.?

If you want to be your own CEO, you must be prepared to spend your own money to enhance your career. For example, you can’t always rely on your company to send you on the training programs that you think will boost your skills and keep you up to date with industry trends. The most prestigious firms can even be tightfisted when it comes to smaller expenses, such as buying quality stationery. I purchased my own pens for much of my career, while a colleague of mine bought his own desk lamp to make up for the poor lighting above his seat in the office.?

Quite a lot of professionals I’ve come across, however, are reluctant to part with their own money if the expense is associated with work, even if that’s just buying a mouse pad or a footrest to make their workspace more comfortable. Because they think like employees rather than consultants, they expect their companies to provide everything that’s related to their job.?

Having a CEO mentality will come in handy when you hit a roadblock in your career because you’ll be willing to spend money and/or time to help overcome the problem.

Let me share two cases that illustrate the benefits of acting like a CEO of your own consulting company.?

The Bootcamp that Changed My Life?

At the beginning of my career, my Prudential life insurance agent told me about a motivational bootcamp in Malaysia that he and hundreds of other agents from his firm were attending. The ABC (awareness before change) course focused on how to build resilience in the face of rejection, and he said it would turn anyone into a superman or superwoman, able to take on seemingly impossible tasks. The training sounded great and I knew it would benefit me in the long term, but it wasn’t directly related to my junior job in risk management. My bank (Standard Chartered) would never sponsor me, but the moment I put on my CEO hat I knew that I had to ask my agent to sign me up. I paid for the course and took five days of annual leave to attend it. The money was well spent because the course set me up for the rest of my career: it improved my teamwork skills and made me more resilient and better able to cope with rejection and change.?

I was the only person not from the insurance firm among the hundreds of agents who participated in the grueling program, which ran from dawn to dusk under the command of a tough ex-army colonel. We left our dorms early each morning for a timed run, and by the end of the week even the slowest person in the group saw their performance improve, encouraged by the rest of us. We also read mantras like “for things to change, I must change first” about a hundred times a day, and listened to songs like I Believe I Can Fly and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother. We laughed and cried together — there was some motivational brainwashing, but I enjoyed it. It changed my life!?

Jack’s Unfortunate Email?

Jack was working for one of the Big Four auditing firms in the U.K. when an important American client told him to take on some urgent additional work. Jack decided not to prioritize this new request ahead of his existing?tasks for other clients, and he wrote a nicely worded email to his boss outlining his reasons. The manager understood his justification, but Jack had made an error: he’d copied the U.S. client into the email. Jack freaked out! He couldn’t sleep for two days. In the meantime, his firm wasn’t helping to get him out of the mess.?

When Jack asked for my advice, I told him to assert himself and act like he was CEO of Jack Consulting. Instead of hoping for salvation as an employee, CEO Jack could instead turn his problem into an opportunity. I suggested that he take two days’ annual leave, buy a plane ticket to the U.S. at his own expense, and visit the client to say sorry in person. The client would see that Jack was sincere since he’d paid for everything himself. Jack could also consider buying a small gift for the client to add extra clout to his apology.?

The realization that he had a potential route to sort out his problems was an enormous psychological relief for Jack: his sleep immediately returned to normal. In the end, the client didn’t react as badly to the email as Jack had initially feared, so he didn’t need to visit the U.S. From that point on he understood the value of spending his own money to help his own career.

(Two more cases can be found in Chapter 4 of the book "Small Actions: Leading Your Career to Big Success")