25 Aug 2020
Being a CEO requires a careful balancing act of leadership and time management, but for businesses to perform, they must create a work environment that fosters innovation and agility.
The role of a chief executive officer is all-consuming. From employees to shareholders, everyone wants a piece of your time. And time is money when you’re growing a company from the ground up and everything from new business pitches to changing a lightbulb falls within your remit. There’s also the small matter of quarterly targets, and how the business plans to achieve them. With so much to juggle, how can CEOs move through the fog of responsibility and find the clarity to innovate?
For Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, it all comes down to empowering yourself, and those around you. As the second-largest employer in the US, there are clear business lessons to be learned, and Bezos’ annual shareholder letters are a good place to start. In 2013, the founder advocated for time management strategies that “decentralise decision-making to generate innovation” and in 2018 told The Wall Street Journal that focusing on “a small number of high-quality decisions” and getting a decent night’s sleep made all the difference. “I think better, I have more energy, my mood’s better,” he told the newspaper
Bezos has also advocated building a business on fixed costs. This is where flexible working policies can make a difference, where costs are upfront and adaptable to evolving needs (not using that spare desk? Just cut it from the budget). In 1999, the Amazon founder advised “building on top of infrastructure that’s improving on its own”. It’s not hard to see how flexspace can help here too. Millennials, who make up the largest demographic of the global workforce, expect a modern, convivial working environment. For CEOs, flexible operators like Regus are a quick win.
Perhaps most prescient of Bezos’ advice is that “self-service platforms unlock innovation”. Flexible workspace has uncovered a new way of working in a similar vein to a self-service platform, allowing CEOs to choose an office format that suits them, and facilitating an environment that removes much of the stress involved in running a company, such as the costs attached to fixed-term office leases.
What we can learn from Bezos is that the working environment established by a CEO will set the tone for a company’s success. Employee wellness and business performance will follow if managers can create an environment that allows creativity and innovation to flourish.