CEOs and executive staff are responsible for providing guidance and direction for organizations or businesses. According to an article by the Stever Robbins, Inc. (2006), the success or failure of a company rest on the shoulders of ther CEO, which includes everything from operations, marketing, strategy, financing, and company culture to human resources, safety compliance regulations, sales, public relations, etc. Although CEOs do not do all these jobs, they have oversight, responsibility and accountability for all of them.

Ries (2011, p. 164-169) said that it is incumbent on managers to “create an institution and not just a product” and that they should know the essential function of “pivoting.” Similar to the basketball term, the objective of pivoting, according to Ries (2011), is to change directions but stay grounded in what one has learned. He added pivoting should be done as soon as and as often as possible in order to enhance chances of success.

While Ries (2011) focused in pivioting, Robinson (2006) stated that CEOs and executive staffs should focus on a different aspect—creativity. According to Robinson (2006), creativity should be just as important as literacy when it comes to helping children to learn. He argued that “education is meant to take us into the future” (Robinson 2006). However, Robinson (2006) said the learning intent is actually working in reverse because children are learning to be afraid of making mistakes. “When kids are frightened of being wrong, it stymies their creativity” (Robinson 2006). In short, if the fear of being wrong is hindering the children of this generation, then it is killing the future of that generation.

In a Night Line broadcast, David Kelly, a design engineer for IDEO, stated that CEOs and executive staff members need to know and stay in their lane (Cupple, 2011). Kelly stated that those in leadership must acknowledge that they are not experts and do not singularly possess the knowledge and skills of the entire production process. Consequently, Kelly recommended CEOs take a team concept approach, where there are no titles, no permanent assignments, and no hierarchy (Cupple 2011).

In Kelly’s world, the team consults with the client first to get an idea of what they want or need, and then begin the brainstorming process, which the IDEO team calls “Deep Dive” (Cupple 2011). “We take every idea—regardless of how wild it may seem—and begin to develop the products from our collective ideas,” said Kelly (Cupple 2011). He added, “We like to call what we do focused chaos rather than organized chaos” (Cupple 2011). Kelly concluded the key to being successful in innovation, which should be the desire of leadership, is being playful—adding that the motto of his designing team is “Fail often in order to succeed sooner” (Cupple 2011). Although that may frighten many CEOs and executive staffs, it has proven successful for IDEO.

For Rios (2011), the learning process IDEO uses should be incorporated in more company learning concepts. “Unfortunately,” Rios (2011, p. 37) stated, ‘learning’ is the oldest excuse in the book for a failure of execution.” However, Rios (2011) also noted that no one should want to fail just to say “at least I learned a lot.” In short, learning should be a continual process for everyone; however, training and education, which are a elements of learning within a company, must be a high priority for CEOs. If it is not important to the CEO, then it is not likely to be important to those below the CEO.

References

Cupple, Ted. “IDEO Deep Dive.” Night Line. Compiled by Regent University. Palo Alto, California, 2011.

Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup. New York: Crown Books, 2011.

Robinson, Ken. “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” TED Ideas Worth Spreading. 2006.

What do CEOs do? A CEO Job Description. February 22, 2006.