Sir Steve Lancashire is Chair of Forum Strategy’s National #TrustLeaders CEO network. He also provides mentoring for CEOs across our network and through the Being The CEO programme. This month’s blog includes Sir Steve’s thoughts on the year ahead, including the importance of staying focused on our ‘true north’ & sense of collective endeavour as a sector, particularly during a likely general election year ahead.
Maintaining our ‘True North’ in testing and changing times
Happy New Year. As the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, I imagined people around the world raising their glasses toasting to new beginnings, enjoying being with their loved ones and families (if, indeed, they were lucky enough to be doing that) and turning their minds to the personal and professional year ahead. I also found myself inevitably reflecting on the year that has been and whether I was happy on both these fronts and what, if anything, I wanted to be different in the next twelve months. And also reflecting on what as a sector we can be rightly proud of, what still needs to be achieved and therefore needs to be a priority for us, and what if anything we should be dissatisfied with and needs some urgent attention.
This time last year, you might remember that I rather presumptuously set us some sector new year resolutions which I invited you to consider. The first of these was to be fundamentally happy with ourselves as CEOs and trust leaders, to recognise that an ‘ideal’ CEO doesn’t exist and ‘progress not perfection’ is what we should be aiming for in our journey through the lifecycle of a CEO, in becoming that Aphrodite Fritillary. I purposely offered sector resolutions and did not invite you to set individual ones because professional New Year resolutions, to my mind, can overshadow the significance of continuous improvement and the principle that we need to embrace the idea that professional growth is an ongoing journey that thrives on iterative progress and learning from experiences. Indeed, this chimes with Alice Gregson’s recent Forum Strategy New Year blog where she encourages CEOs and trust leaders to continue to focus on the things that matter and that you are already doing, rather than feeling a New Year requires some new radical leadership gestures, commitments or solutions in order to improve and succeed.
“an ‘ideal’ CEO doesn’t exist and ‘progress not perfection’ is what we should be aiming for in our journey through the lifecycle of a CEO.”