Top 3 Ways CEO Can Outpace The Competition in 2019

With such a competitive business landscape, generating ways that you can use to leverage your resources and stay miles ahead of your competitors can be challenging. As the new year quickly approaches, now is the time to begin reflecting on what worked and did not work in 2018. According to leading CEO peer groups and CEO development consultants, these are the top 3 things you should be looking to do starting January 1st to put some distance between you and the competition throughout 2019.

1. Narrow Your Focus. Often business leaders strive to accomplish a plethora of goals, including increasing revenue, decreasing costs, enhancing the customer service experience, and maybe even hiring more staff. The key to truly achieve your goals is to choose a few (I recommend no more than 3) and focus 100% on accomplishing those goals during the year. This way your time, attention, and resources are dedicated to fully solving your smaller number of problems, ensuring that the solutions you implement will work and be effective in the long-term. When you spread your resources across too many areas, you run the risk of using an unsustainable solution or not achieving your goal altogether.
2. Invest time into Mastery. This is where studying elite athletes can help CEOs in the business world. When you look at the habits of the greatest athletes in history, they share one commonality: they practice relentless at least 6 days a week. Now, imagine how much more efficient and effective your company could be, if you dedicated an hour every day for mastering one important skill. For example, suppose you want to better prospect clients. If you practice this once a week, or like most, once a month, you’ll spend a lot of time relearning the skill and trying to remember where you left off the last time. This learning curve slows you down and makes learning and perfecting that skill take longer, if ever happening at all.
3. Make Professional Development a Priority. As the CEO, getting the professional support you need to grow your knowledge base and become a more effective leader can be hard to come by. However, if you schedule in time now, for the coming year and dedicate at least an hour a week to developing your leadership skills, you will be better positioned to innovate and inspire your teams to grow. If you need help finding resources to support you on your leadership journey, consider joining the award-winning CEO peer development group at The Brain Trust. Our monthly meetings ensure that all CEO members get the tailored business support and leadership coaching they need to be successful.

With just a few weeks left in the year, now is the time to begin crafting your plan to make 2019 the best year yet. For more ways to stay ahead of the competition, explore our blog here.