Apr 05, 2018
Gotta find a way. Gotta find a way. Gotta find a way.
What happened to the Philadelphia Eagles this year? Lost their CRO. Lost their SVP of Product. Lost their CFO. Lost their head of customer service. Lost their director of account management. Lost their most tenured, tested and trusted frontline employees. What didn’t happen to them? They didn’t lose their CEO. They didn’t lose their investors. They won the Super Bowl.
Our location selection for the Edison 7th Annual CEO Summit definitely had something to do with how the Eagles kept their eyes on the prize and our rational exuberance for how they got it done. We are happy to share that we’ve selected Wharton Business School, in the hometown city of our Super Bowl LII champs, to host our upcoming Edison Partners 2018 CEO Summit, our premier exec ed event for portfolio CEOs.
We have been studying leadership, organizational design, growth versus fixed mindsets and businesses with a formula for fast and efficient scaling. We have studied our companies and we have studied best-in-class companies across all industries. What we uncovered is that the best-performing companies in our portfolio (and frankly, the best in the world, including the Philadelphia Eagles) have a few traits in common.
Top of the list, they have leaders who anticipate. They think ahead and they plan ahead. They don’t single thread and they don’t have heroes. They have balance, they have a bench and they have a formula for being the best. They are ahead on everything from market trends, organizational needs, hiring of the next talented players, and the operational adjustments required to counter attack or just purely scale for success.
These are the factors that “faster growers” prioritize in their business. And, anticipation puts these leaders ahead of the pack in almost every scenario.
We are working closely with the Executive Education team at Wharton to develop a customized program titled Anticipate. And, our event will delve into the best-practice sequence pivotal to growing faster and more efficiently than the market multiple and the competition.
We will explore how the best of the best leaders anticipate. With the help of Patty McCord, Chief Talent Officer of Netflix and author of the best-selling book Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, we will provide strategies that assist fast growers to anticipate change, efficiently scale, and build sustainable value. We will emphasize the importance of continual learning for growth CEOs.
What is your formula for finding a way? How do you anticipate adversity, future needs and what the customer wants in two years not just this quarter? How do you design resilience and successful scale?
Edison CEOs, EDNs and even some of our LPs are ANTICIPATING the date, May 15-17. We look forward to sharing key learnings with all of you upon our return.