How today’s CEOs can win by Mckinsey global boss

Global chief executive of Mckinsey & Company, Dominic Barton, yesterday delivered to top Nigerian CEOs high-level counsel about how they can succeed in today’s difficult and rapidly changing business environment.
Barton spoke about the six tips of success at a breakfast meeting in Lagos held in collaboration with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG). He said today’s CEO must be willing and able to challenge his own orthodoxies and then go on to re-design his company’s business model. Many CEOs hold on their fading and sometimes outdated ideas about life and business at their own peril.
Secondly, Barton, who first visited Nigerian eight years ago when he spoke at the annual BusinessDay CEO Forum, said the winning CEO was one able to transition his company’s firm into a dynamic organisation, one that was nimble and agile, responding swiftly to changes around him without delay. Thirdly, he said it was important for a CEO to be equipped to re-allocate his company’s resources aggressively and efficiently in the light of emerging trends in the business landscape.
Fourthly, he said a CEO must be able to capture data and analytics opportunities for his firm in an age where data was everything.
According to Barton, today’s CEO must one who will elevate the company’s HR function so as to unleash the talent residual in his team.
Finally, he said today’s CEO must set a bold ambition and he invited the question from one of the guests who asked if there were early signs that can help judge whether a CEO is being crazy or simply bold?
Barton laced his presentation with comments or experiences of some of the world’s leading CEOs.
One said his biggest challenge is how to remain ahead of the curve all the time and another saying companies today have a shorter time span within which to re-invent. There was yet another CEO who broke his company’s 80,000 workforce into 200 autonomous companies, each with its own P&L and is better for it today.
Another CEO said as much as 40% of today’s companies will perish in ten years if they failed to figure out what to do with technology.
Barton drew a bigger applause when he showed two videos, one of the change of tyre in a car race in 1950 and the second of a change of tire in 2013. In the 1950 video, the team simply waited and when the race car finally arrived, it took several minutes whereas in the 2013 video, a good part of the work was underway long before the race car arrived and the actual change of tire happened in seconds.  One of the CEOs present alluded to how it has taken Nigeria two years to draw up and launch a simple growth plan to fix its economy.
Barton pointed to a number of global CEOs who inspire him including the head of ICIC, the bank in India that has seen its market capitalization grow from a mere $400 million to $45 billion today.
He illustrated the value of having a bold leader by what was done in South Korea in 1970 when the country began work on a steel plant contrary to the counsel of the World Bank and others and today the steel company is the most profitable in the world.
In 1969, South Korea was in the bottom ten of the world’s poorest nations.
Around the world, CEOs are seeking innovative ways to lead and one illustration he gave was about a CEO who chose to spend time with the US army just to understand how the army picks its 5-star generals because he was in the process of resolving a succession challenge.

“Today”, Barton says, “successful companies recruit or hire for attitude and not for just skills and the paper qualification.”