Stepping into a new CEO role is an exciting, energizing, and daunting experience all at once. You are called upon to shape the company’s future success – a truly exciting mandate and a multi-dimensional task that can often seem beyond human reach at the start.
Egon Zehnder has developed the CEO Bootcamp for incoming leaders as they prepare to step into the top role. It equips them from the start to navigate the complexity of the first 100 days – and boosts personal growth to fully embrace their new identity as the company’s source of direction.
What does it mean to take on the top leadership role in today’s world of multiple uncertainties? It is a call to transformation: A task of leading an entire organization to the next level of responsiveness to external change, again and again. This not only calls for setting the direction for the entire company, even in a VUCA environment when visibility about the future is low. It is also the task at the top to orchestrate the company’s creative power to venture into new business models and markets. To inspire commitment from within for the future to build and to attract the next generation of talent. To define and communicate the company’s purpose and positive impact on society. Above all, it is the leader’s task to develop and inspire other leaders to create followership in the organization to shape the future together.
This is not only a strategic and operative challenge - it is also a call to live up to one’s personal purpose. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to help shape the future in a world undergoing radical transformation; a chance to rethink leadership, to have a real impact, and to grow as an individual in the process. In fact, being a good CEO is not a job; it's a calling.
The intervening weeks between being nominated as a new CEO and Day One in the job should be a time of deep reflection - not only planning. The 100-day agenda might take a different shape as it becomes a true expression of your new identity.
At Egon Zehnder, we have extensive experience in supporting leaders on this path – accompanying them from the day they enter the succession process through completing their first 100 days and beyond. In this period, success is less about the CEO’s agenda and more about how fast the new leader can gain traction in their new environment and set the tone for the future. Speed is of the essence, and our two-day CEO Bootcamp helps incoming leaders prepare optimally for their new role.
What you will gain from the Bootcamp experience
What you will gain from the Bootcamp experience
The CEO Bootcamp is designed to be a well-timed moment of 360° reflection and preparation for the new task, looking at The Self, Team, Organization, Stakeholders, and the overall Context.
- A deep dive into how to master the transition process – stepping into the CEO identity (“becoming the CEO, not just doing the job of a CEO”)
- A unique opportunity to shape the CEO agenda for the first 100 days, based on a refined understanding of the systemic role of the CEO
- An encounter with several key leadership instruments, essential to shape the role of the CEO at the start – and useful throughout your term
- Preparation for getting a headstart with the leadership team and for shaping the ways of working from Day One
- Taking stock of stakeholder expectations and how to meet and shape them – starting with the Chair and the Board
- A time for self-reflection and for crafting one’s own personal development agenda on a deeper level (vertical development)
- An opportunity to understand and define one’s own boundaries when taking on the mantle of CEO (sources of energy, personal and professional life, strategies for resilience)
This moment of preparation and reflection becomes the starting point for shaping the CEO’s mandate as well as their transformational agenda. It provides both a structure and a canvas for reflection to make sense of the complex multitude of factors of success at the start, and to find simplicity behind this complexity - rooted in the new CEO identity. The resulting 100-day agenda provides the compass for what to do, but - even more importantly – how to approach it and why.
Creating a successful Transformation Agenda
Creating a successful Transformation Agenda
A comprehensive, holistic, and coherent agenda for the first 100 days will provide a framework for an incoming CEO to take charge at all levels. And this agenda will be transformative in essence – not only for the organization but also for the CEO and the senior leaders in the organization.
To quote Frederic Laloux, author of ‘Reinventing Organizations’:
"It is true that an organization cannot evolve beyond its leadership's stage of development."
Therefore, accelerated success of the CEO also starts with becoming aware of the personal transformational resources and tools available to the CEO.
The CEO Bootcamp provides tomorrow’s leaders with the repertoire they need to transform their companies, while transforming their own lives. How? By connecting the strategic direction they plan to implement with clarity about the required shift in culture and mindset and with the required “upgrade” of the leadership repertoire – their own in the new role at the top, and the one of all leaders in the organization to create the desired future together.
Success as a CEO starts even before the first 100 days
Success as a CEO starts even before the first 100 days
Successful CEOs don't wait for someone to onboard them to their new position and team. They shape their way into the company to make a difference- already before day one.
Effective leadership begins with clarity – about yourself, your role and the way forward. Take the lead now: with the Egon Zehnder CEO Bootcamp.
