“Clearly, every company needs a leader. That’s an important part of being the CEO.” ~Sanjay Kumar (CEO of Computer Associates International)
The CEO is a company’s Chief Executive Officer responsible for developing corporate strategy and culture, providing vision and a sense of mission, team-building, allocating budget and capital concerns and championing a product line.
In other words, the CEO of a corporation is the leader and ultimate decision-maker of the company. It’s the desk at which the buck stops.
But corporations are not the only ones in need of executive officers.
Who is the CEO of Your Life?
Who determines the vision that guides you, the goals that take you there, the standards that govern the goals you set, the tone and tenor of your brand, the personal culture of integrity and character you’re known by, the way you spend your time, energy and resources?
Who, in short, is in charge of your life?
The answer to this question may not be as obvious as you think. See if you can identify who most often operates as your personal chief decision-maker …
Public Opinion as CEO
Those who are led by public opinion have a soft middle, a squishy center, a runny foundation of soft-serve values and a 31 flavored sample of principles upon which they sometimes stand.
They make decisions with one finger in the air checking for the fickle winds of popularity and one scanning the latest public opinion polls. They hesitate when in a bind and defer to others. They lead from within the crowd, absorbing the values of the collective.
If this is you, you follow trends and fads and melt your personal identity into the mushy and shapeless stew of mass opinion.
Peer Pressure as CEO
Similarly, when we become reflections of other people’s will, shadows of their desires, subject to their whims and fancies, we cease being ourselves.
When Peer Pressure is the CEO of your life, you are abdicating a basic responsibility to be self-governing.
Your life is lived as quotation marks wrapped around the parroted words and ideas and opinions of your peer group. Your motto is “Don’t rock the boat” and your anthem is “Their Way.”
Tradition as CEO
Some people do very little thinking about improvement, innovation and experimentation. They are governed by tradition, by the way things have always been. Life is reduced to a treadmill.
But life-by-status-quo is a difficult way to live in a world that constantly changes. When we stand still in the ebb and flow of life as it regularly shifts and reshapes itself, we eventually get left behind, usually in someone else’s wake.
If tradition is your acting CEO, you live by default and think by proxy. You subjugate thought to reflex, wisdom to conditioning, intelligence to convention, choice to predictability and true happiness to the habitually tried and comfortably known.
Fear as CEO
Is fear the primary decision-maker in your life? Does embarrassment send you marching orders? Is timidity the set of rules by which you operate? If so, your internal leader leads from the back of the crowd in the form of a retreat.
Such people start and fall back, begin, then talk themselves out of it. Anxiety is master, priest and marriage partner. Every decision is made softly. A fully operational escape hatch comes standard with each decision you tentatively write on the chalkboard of your heart.
Reasons not to always outweigh reasons to. Excuses justify surrender. Life is therefore lived in park, or reverse, or while looking in the rear-view mirror at a life that might have been.
The Heart and Mind as CEO
The mind is a powerful tool, for sure. But a life of the mind without heart is a sterile intellectual wasteland. While a life of the heart divorced from the mind is often an emotional house of cards.
When major decisions are made solely by reliance on the power of the brain, we become dependent on our own blind spots, weaknesses, and myopic perspectives born of provincial experiences.
Besides, not everything is accurately discernible by the mind. Sometimes, we just have to step into the unknown and perhaps even the unknowable. In those moments, it becomes obvious that we need something more than the limited mind or the liberated heart.
Universal Principle as CEO
But when we center our lives on something higher and limitless, the possibilities also rise to the level of the infinite.
Universal principles transcend culture and circumstance. Just as there are universal principles that govern physics and biology, there are universal moral laws that govern relationships, personal growth and happiness.
I believe the Author of these timeless truths is God. But whether you do or not is irrelevant to their value and reliability. When we comport our lives to universal principle, we put our lives on course to reap their natural product.
Marriages based on principle are marriages where respect and trust are richly infused into the fabric of the relationship. Emotional lives that adhere to principle are steady, upbeat, positive and joyful. Peace and happiness are the hallmarks of those whose lives are based on universal wisdom.
We live in unsteady times. A steady foundation under our feet can therefore help us reach levels of happiness currently unrealized
Afterthoughts
“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” ~Peter Drucker
Integrity to universal law means we don’t look for the shortcut to the natural process of growth and development. It means we live our lives closely (even if not perfectly) to universal values of human decency and emotional well-being. It means we live in tune with the fundamental principles of happiness.
When principle is followed, the mind is employed when the mind is needed. The heart, when the heart offers the best answer. Fear, when fear is the proper response to danger. Tradition, when tradition is recognized as built on principle and universal truths.
In other words, when universal principles (and the God that authors them) are at the center of our lives, all other things will fall into their correct and most useful places as we stumble through this thing called life experiencing the abundant life we call happiness.
Your Turn …
Have you experienced different types of “CEOs” running your life? Have the wrong CEOs gotten you into difficulty in the past? Who’s running it now? Please share your thoughts below.
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Hi ken,
I really think my whole life is about taking back the position of CEO from all the other contenders! If you’d asked me who was CEO where it came to parenting, I’d have answered “Principles” but I’ve never thought about it in terms of my life as a whole. For some time now I’ve been about trying to understand the way things work and how I can work within systems or change systems (usually change them;-) so I can be happy here in my skin and in my world!
Who is the CEO of your life Ken?
Lori
Lori Gosselin recently posted … Are You Happy?
If your life has been about figuring out how things work and working within sytems or working to change them, it sounds to me a lot like a whole life built on priniples.
As for me, I try to make principles the most frequent CEO of my life, and usually do a pretty good job of keeping the others from mounting a coup. Sometimes, is depends on what I’m doing, what’s in front of me. Fear soemtimes tries to push its way to the top of the corporate ladder, but not often. I’m pretty good at acknowledging my fears, deciding on principle (with lots of counsel from heart and mind) what the best next step is, then taking that step into the scary wilderness of the unknown.
I always try to do my best so this way, the CEO of my life might be courage; in the last couple of months I’ve started a new hobby with 3D printing my digital designs, and it has turned already into business which is so much fun! Actually now I can work what I really love to do!
bonooobong recently posted … Egy hét 3D nyomtatókkal
Courage as CEO is not a bad way to run the corporation of Self!
The only caution is to be sure principles are not too far behind. Otherwise, courage can be exercised in wrong pursuits.
That’s awesome that you courageously turned a hobby into a business. There’s nothing much better than getting paid for doing what you would do anyway without the pay!
Another thought provoking post Ken. In a word, be true to yourself 🙂
Neil Butterfield recently posted … You NEED Chocolate! See Why…
Thanks Neil. Being true to our highest selves can be difficult when there are cross currents churning inside. So figuring out which self to be true to is an important step, it seems to me. But once we’ve figured out the kind of person we want to be, pursuing that end is a worthy cause, for sure.
On another note, too many people sacrifice and compromise and delay and never quite get around to taking the path they’ve always known was the path they were meant to take. Status quo defeats passion and purpose and meaning and the courage needed to step into the unknown that calls to your soul.
Great addition, Neil. Truth (to others and yourself) is always a good CEO to have operating the controls of your life.
Really good post Ken. There is a perspective here that I don’t think garners a lot of consideration in the busy day-to-day but I think we all have moments where we truly wonder who IS actually in charge of our lives. Thanks for a great blog, sharing with several people I know could use this wisdom as well!
So glad you found the message useful, Courtney. I agree with you that it’s a perspective we don’t hear spoken about much, but is one that is critical to living a self-directed life. I do hope the message hits home for those you shared it with.
Great post again Ken. Being in the marketing game, I tend to want to please everyone at the same time. This is obviously impossible so I am learning to toughen up and be my unique self regardless of the consequences.
Hey Wade! I somehow let this comment slip by. Thanks for the kudos. I can see how it would be easy to fall into that trap of trying to please everyone in your field. But unless we stand for something and represent something and can be trusted to create and express and be consistent to that brand, we dissolve into watery soup, personally or professionally or socially or otherwise.
Having said that, there is merit to a brand that says, “Have it your way!”.
By 1948, the American public had come to take public opinion polls for granted. The universal success of the nation’s leading pollsters in predicting the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1936, 1940 and 1944 had left most people with little doubt of their dependability. It was with considerable surprise, therefore, that people awoke on the morning following the 1948 election to discover that the polls had been wrong. The failure of the 1948 election surveys to predict Truman’s victory over Dewey naturally raised the questions, “What went wrong? Just how accurate are the public opinion polls?”
The American public had come to take public opinion polls for granted. The universal success of the nation’s leading pollsters in predicting the outcomes of the presidential elections of 1936, 1940 and 1944 had left most people with little doubt of their dependability. It was with considerable surprise, therefore, that people awoke on the morning following the 1948 election to discover that the polls had been wrong.
public opinion polls recently posted … Accuracy Of Public Opinion Polls