Every CEO Job Is a First CEO Job
Functional expertise is much more portable than CEO expertise.
When an experienced CFO takes a new job, they bring their entire playbook with them.
At this CFO’s new company, they’re working with a different set of accounts, maybe in a different industry, and they need to get up to speed on things like how their new employer recognizes revenue. But 90% of the job — the core CFO stuff like building the forecast, managing a close, etc. — translates from one job to another.
Most executive roles are similar in that regard. CFOs, CMOs, CHROs, etc. all have models of how their role creates value, and that model can move from company to company.
In other words, functional expertise is portable.
CEOs don’t have that luxury. Every time they step into a new role, they are essentially starting over. There are two related reasons this is the case:
Most CEOs just don’t have a good model. There are models for how to do the enterprise CEO job, with elements that do translate between companies. The model I built, CEO-S, is designed to give CEOs that playbook other e…
