Where do we start this week? Sadly, with the Lionesses’ heroic failure on Sunday morning. If you’d told me a few years ago I’d be watching a game of women’s football, I’d have had my doubts. But there I was – along with 12m other people in the UK. As this article says, win or lose, the game will have a lasting legacy – and rightly so.
The biggest audience of the tournament was in China, with over 50m watching the 6-1 defeat to England. But China has bigger problems than the Lionesses mauling the Steel Roses. (Every day’s a school day, eh? I bet you didn’t know that…)
As many of you will have seen, China’s central bank recently cut its prime rate as the economic recovery faltered in the face of falling exports, weak consumer spending and the ongoing property crisis.
So, it is bad news for the Chinese economy and – by implication – bad news for the world economy. So why is there continuing optimism among CEOs and business owners in TAB UK and the wider business community?
You might argue that entrepreneurs are, by nature, people whose glass is half-full. I’m certainly one of them – and I don’t think that’s purely down to the week off I’ve just had. (Those remarks about the accuracy of my putter in the previous post? Forget them…)
My view probably reflects the majority of TAB members: there may be some headwinds coming our way, but we’re all confident that our own companies will survive them and continue to grow.
Let us, though, move away from the anecdotal to something a little more analytical: the Fortune/Deloitte Summer 2023 Survey of CEOs.
First things first: the survey is based on CEOs in the US – but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t mirror feelings in the UK. At first glance, the survey offered some contradictory findings:
- 53% of CEOs expect a recession in the second half of this year or early 2024
- But 89% of CEOs expect their organisation to have modest, strong, or very strong growth over the next 12 months.
What do CEOs see as their biggest challenge? If you click the link and look at the word cloud, you’ll see ‘Geopolitics’ writ large – along with the economy, the worrying ‘turbulence’ and ‘uncertainty’ and the seemingly never-ending war for talent.
I’ve written about AI any number of times on the blog this year. We’ve all heard the stories of how AI will wipe out industries and disrupt jobs. What do the CEOs in the survey think? 79% believe it will increase efficiency, and just over half (52%) believe it will increase growth opportunities.
Yep, the glass is very much half-full…
…And this, I think, is exactly where peer support and coaching through The Alternative Board can be so valuable.
All of us have a tendency to believe what we want to believe: this idea will work. The recession won’t affect us. Our competitors won’t do what we’re afraid of them doing.
I’m not sure I agree with everything in this article, but it’s a simple fact: we’re more likely to believe things that confirm our existing desires, thoughts and values. And for owners and directors of SMEs, one thing they want to believe is obvious: My business will be successful.
If you have a board of directors – whether they work in the business or they’re non-execs – they are, in my experience, likely to agree with you. You’re paying them: not surprisingly, they also want to believe that your business will succeed.
Your colleagues around the TAB table will take a very different view. Of course, they want your business to succeed: over the years, they’ve become friends and business colleagues. But they’re impartial: they have absolutely no financial stake in your success.
That means they can challenge you. They can ask tough, searching questions. That’s their role – to ask those difficult questions. And the roles will be rightly reversed when they are presenting their plans.
It’s an unfortunate phrase, but we’re all tempted to ‘breathe in our own exhaust.’ That’s especially true of entrepreneurs, people who very often don’t have anyone to share ideas with.
That can’t happen if you run your ideas past a TAB board. Over the years I’ve lost count of the number of ‘brilliant’ ideas that have been punctured by a simple question.
Sometimes, it doesn’t make for a comfortable Board meeting. But always, always, always, the first words you’ll hear the next month are, ‘You were right. You’ve saved me a fortune. Thank you.’
CEOs are right to be optimistic. I’ve never met a CEO or small business owner who wasn’t optimistic. But in these challenging times it needs to be optimism tempered by a healthy dash of scrutiny.
And you won’t find any better scrutiny than in a TAB meeting…
