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The Role of a Solid Executive: Sustainability and Growth

Guest post by: Roger Ingbretsen

Article Overview: In order to not rely on the past and secure continual success, you the executive must do two things. First, you must ensure sustainability, which involves maintaining and securing the present day to day discipline of running the company and applying sound business principles. Second, you must ensure growth, which involves being innovative, and having drive, determination, and focusing on the future.

The Role of a Solid Executive: Sustainability and Growth

Business must deal with the disciplines of doing things to a high degree of excellence on a daily basis. Additionally, a business executive, more than any other occupation, must continually deal with the future. Rarely can your past success be realized as your future potential. Good solid executives recognize that perhaps the greatest enemy they face is the internal one: the complacency that results from resting on their laurels.” Solid executives realize the first rule of survival is clear: nothing is more dangerous than yesterday’s success.”

It is true that an executive can learn from the past and that they can build on their past success. However, they also know they must not let their success in the past block their vision of the future. As an executive you can certainly celebrate and be proud of your last great play, but as hockey great Wayne Gretzky said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Philosopher Peter Koestenbaum believes that the central attribute of leadership is the ability to manage polarity and that it is simply a part of life. Some examples of polarity or being driven or pulled in different directions are as follows. We want to live, yet we must die. Am I a boss or a friend? Can I devote myself fully to both family and career? Can I reconcile my own needs with those of my organization? Can I cope with the brutal reality of effectively dealing with the current business needs, while taking the time to create the important future business objectives? This clash of priorities is exactly where most executives find themselves. A solid executive does lose sight of the fact that dealing with polarities and making the tough choices are the daily requirements of leadership.

In order to not rely on the past and secure continual success, you the executive must do two things. First, you must ensure sustainability, which involves maintaining and securing the present day to day discipline of running the company and applying sound business principles. Second, you must ensure growth, which involves being innovative, and having drive, determination, and focusing on the future. Growth is vital to our collective prosperity. Every executive, person, department, company, and economy must grow to realize prosperity. Show me something that is not being sustained and growing, and I’ll show you something that is dying. This is the major polarity executives and their organizations face, disciplined sustainability and innovative growth. It is not a matter of stopping the train and taking the time to redesign the tracks ahead. It is keeping the train going while anticipating when and where the next switch will be thrown that will keep the organization going along the best right-of-way.

A solid executive understands they cannot simply slow down or stop what they are doing today in order to focus exclusively on the future. They know they must, at the same time, both secure the present and develop people and processes for the future profitable growth of the organization. This dual focus requires that an executive must challenge all members of the organization to develop a mind-set and skill-set that allows them to strike a balance between performing daily requirements with excellence, and being able to change and transform for the future. All stakeholders need to be thinking and driving toward the big picture, while still mastering the details. With this objective in mind, the solid executive will build a dream team, which is both compliance and performance oriented.



For this to become reality, the solid executive understands they must build an organization, which employs the right people (players) in the right jobs (positions) with the best skills (talents) who know and can execute the game plan. No organization can continue to prosper and grow without having the right people in the right jobs. The solid executive understands that winning is about having the best people on your team. It doesn’t help if you’re surrounded by people who are less talented than you are. So much of executive leadership is about accomplishing sustainability and growth through the results of others.

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Article Tags: role of an executive, sound business principles, sustainability



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