The Corner Office

CEO Blog

  • Your First Team: Building a High-Performing Leadership Team

    Your senior leadership team—your “First Team”—can make or break your company. How well does your First Team work together?Achieving alignment and excellence within this group is one of the six things only you, the CEO, can do! Let’s explore the key elements that define a high-performing First Team:1. Team CompositionDo you have the right team in place?In the middle market,

  • Improving Your Personal Effectiveness as a Leader

    Happy New Year! I hope you had time to Pause, Rest, and Reflect over the holidays. A new year brings the perfect opportunity for a “new you”! By now, I’m sure you’ve completed your 2028 Strategic Plan and 2025 Yearly Plan. But as leaders, our personal effectiveness is just as critical to achieving those goals.While strategic plans focus on organizational priorities,

  • Pause, Rest, and Reflect

    As the year winds down, I want to take a moment to encourage you to pause, rest, and reflect—not just for yourself but also for your team and loved ones. For CEOs like you, the demands of work and life are rarely slow. Yet, intentional rest is a critical part of high performance. This is

  • Creating your 2025 Yearly Plan & KPIs

    With your 3-year strategic plan finalized, it’s time to narrow your focus and build a robust Yearly Plan for 2025. A strategy without clear, measurable benchmarks is merely an idea; translating that idea into actionable results demands precision, planning, and adaptability. These steps will ensure your 2025 Yearly Plan is not only actionable but also

  • 6 Steps to Building a BOLD 2028 Plan for Growth

    Once you’ve reflected on your 2024 performance and gathered key insights, it’s time to move into the next crucial phase—formulating your strategic plan for 2028 and your 2025 Yearly Plan.  Your strategic plan for 2028 and your 2025 Yearly Plan needs to be more than just sitting around a table with your First Team doing a financial exercise. 

  • Reflect & Evaluate: How 2024 Sets the Stage for 2025 Success

    As CEOs, we’re wired to move forward—always focused on your First Team’s effectiveness, resolving the next challenge, and focused on the next strategic move. But before you start laying the groundwork for 2025, it’s crucial to hit pause and take a moment to reflect on your 2024 performance. Evaluating where you’ve been is the key to positioning your business for where

  • 10 Strategic Questions Every CEO Should Ask to Prepare for 2025

    As 2024 comes to a close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on your company’s performance and start positioning your business for success in 2025. The business landscape is evolving rapidly, and as a CEO, your leadership and foresight will determine whether your organization thrives or stalls in the coming year. To get ahead, here

  • Why You Need to Start Planning for 2025 Now

    Here’s the reality: If you want to hit the ground running in 2025, now is the time to start planning. The earlier you begin, the more time you have to identify gaps, implement changes, and ensure your First Team and their teams are fully aligned. Scrambling at the end of the year, or worse, early next year, makes

  • 4 Steps to Engaging Stakeholders

    In our previous blog, we discussed the sixth and final thing that only a CEO can do, Engaging Stakeholders and why that matters.  This week, I wanted to talk about “how” you do that!  Here are four practical steps that you, as a mid-market CEO, can implement to strengthen stakeholder engagement and ensure that everyone feels connected

  • Are you focused on the wrong things as a Mid-Market CEO, #6

    Engaging Stakeholders  As a CEO, your ability to connect with stakeholders—both internal and external—has a profound impact on your organization’s success. For CEOs in the mid-market as well as Fortune 500, Engaging Stakeholders is essential to aligning interests, building trust, and ensuring the long-term growth of your business. GREAT CEOs treat stakeholder engagement as a core priority.