The CEO Trinity – The 3 Roles CEOs Play And Which Is Your Dominant One?
- Mar 2, 2022
- 6 min read
Written by: Jeremy Han, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Scaling Up coach Jeremy Han shares 3 observations about the types of CEOs he has encountered to help you discover which type you are.
At the start of 2022, I had a chat with a second generation CEO. He is someone I was meeting for the first time but we had a very candid and open chat about his role, goals and priorities going forward. But what struck me most was the way he described himself as an ‘empire builder’, expanding the borders of what the previous generation had done, and growing the business almost 30X. What impressed me most was his clarity on how he saw himself, and that clarity allowed his team, including his brother who is the COO, to rally around and complement him.
Business leader, are you clear who you are?
In my work with CEOs and teams, I observed that there are three main roles CEOs find themselves performing. The roles are mainly the Visionary Pioneer, the Empire Builder and the Consolidator. I want to stress at the beginning that there is no one better type, but that all CEOs play the 3 roles. However, certain roles may be more dominant. So this is really an article to help CEOs better understand themselves, so they can build the ideal team that would complement them.
Let’s start with the Visionary Pioneer.
You dream of a better world, where you see a problem that you could make right. But you do not stop there. You pursue the dream and rally people around it. You initiate products or services that fill that gap, and then ask yourself, “How do I take this to the world?” You function best with the thrill of proving not only the product works, but also the customers loving it (and pay for it!). Your biggest thrill comes from turning that idea into reality, a reality that also translates to commercial success.
What about the Empire Builder?
Empire builders are CEOs who look far beyond the horizon, dreaming of possibilities that are currently beyond what you have, and having a strong desire or ambition to make them yours. Your focus is on looking at ways to grow by expansion through different markets, parallel industries or sheer conquests (M&A in today’s terms). What occupies your mind is adding to what you have already achieved, and you spend your time studying markets, industries or companies that you could penetrate in order to bring growth by both organic and inorganic means. And then you lead your troops to conquer.
And who are the Consolidator Sustainer?
The softer aspects of business success are important to you. You care about the legacy, the culture, and the image of the business. Not that the Visionary Pioneer or the Empire Builder do not care about the branding, but the consolidator looks beyond the business aspects of the brand – they care about the impact of the brand on society, community and the world, for example by asking “Are we a force for good?” “Is our culture something we are proud to talk about?” Their business focus would still be on growth, but it is more to ensure growth is sustainable and meaningful for all stakeholders. They want stability as a foundation for future growth. They want to grow ‘properly’.
Please do not confuse Consolidator Sustainers with what I consider Care-taker CEOs. Care-takers are those who no longer plan to grow, but merely to maintain. They play not-to-lose and avoid risk or any forms of uncertainties. Care-takers are not what I would like to discuss in this article.
So, which personality, the Visionary Pioneer, the Empire Builder, or the Consolidator Sustainer, are you predominantly? I believe as your business grows, every CEO will cycle through the stages, but there would be one type that is inherently you, and it would constantly show up. The purpose of this article is really to help you discover who you are, and then help you to succeed in it.
Consider the case of Lee. Lee ran a business for almost 15 years, growing it to become the largest player in his industry and market. He is constantly innovating his business model, products and services, especially with the advent of Covid 19. The company has gone through many changes over the years, and as it grew, its brand became synonymous with education and personal growth. He had built a great team and they constantly engage in meaningful activities like CSR and giving to the community.
Yet, over lunch, Lee told me he yearns to start all over again with just a small team, with a new product, and a whole new world to prove to. His true passion is to launch a new, unproven business and see it take root and grow across the globe. But he said wistfully that could not be the case because he had to run and grow the flagship business. I asked him why not? It is just a matter of re-arranging his business structure to allow him to be the Visionary Pioneer again. It would take time to raise a successor or a team to complement him, but that is what the point of this article is – to help us understand our best role as a CEO for the season.
Or the example of Henry, who as the business grows rapidly, constantly wants to ensure that the business fundamentals are well covered and the team did not neglect them. He wants to build a strong foundation, with people well-trained, proper structures put in place, cash flow processes always improving and the financials properly planned for. In a fast-growing industry like solar power, there are many opportunities for Henry’s company to grow, and in my planning sessions with his team, we are talking about regional expansion into Europe and the US.
While his partner is more ‘optimistic’ about the growth and more willing to take risks, Henry, the CEO, would remind them to build the growth on a strong foundation so that they do not over-stretch, or run into cash flow problems. While he believes in the next 18 months the business could grow 3X, he wants to do it right and make sure the potholes ahead are well-covered so that there would be as fast-growing surprises as possible. Henry is clearly a Consolidator Sustainer by nature, leading a fast growing business in a very exciting industry. His partner is a good balance to him, and sometimes as his coach, I come in to balance the two of them.
As leaders, we will mature over the various cycles our businesses go through. The roles we play as business leaders would circle around these three, although at some seasons, some roles would be more critical. Yet at the heart of it, we know we are made for a particular role more than the others. I hope today you would find this article pointing you in the right direction, helping you to understand where you are at, and where you want to go from here. And then, you can communicate that and find the right people who will complement you for the next stage of your success.
As the wise sage once said, “the first step to winning is to ‘know thyself’.
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Jeremy Han, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
He is a certified Scaling Up coach with Gazelles International, specializing in coaching executive teams of scale-ups across the world to maximize their profits and their impact. His clients are companies in Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Nepal in a diverse range of industries. They range from publicly listed conglomerates with revenues above a billion dollars to fast-growing scale-ups between $10m - $800m in revenue size. His personal mission is to help 100 CEOs, in 10 years, to impact 100m people. Besides business growth, he has helped companies to set lasting legacy goals that spur both dynamic growth and long-term impact. Some of these goals include creating 1m jobs in 10 years, clothing 1m people in 10 years, and enabling 1m under-privileged children to attend university in 10 years.
