New Podcast: 10 Critical Keys to Business Survival Right Now

Stephen Miles of TMG on the survivalist thinking required to get through today's challenges

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Mar 10, 2020, 10:00 ET

NEW YORK, March 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- "The shocks to the system that companies are facing today are forcing a new kind of survivalist thinking in CEOs," says Stephen Miles, CEO of The Miles Group/TMG in a new C-Suite Intelligence podcast out today. "From the stunning impact of the coronavirus to the increasingly rigorous ESG expectations placed on every company to the exceptional level of performance demanded of leaders 24/7/365, the best CEOs are shifting the way they and their teams approach these daunting problems."

In his new podcast, "10 Critical Keys to Business Survival," Miles walks through what he has identified as the top factors CEOs must focus on to lead their companies through the most challenging business climate in more than a decade.

"CEOs aren't just in the money-making business – they are in the stakeholder business, whether they know it or not," says Miles. "How they respond to external, outlier events like COVID-19 is of course critical to survival, but just as important is their ongoing ability to exist in the new transparency of the social economy."

A coach to some of the best-known, highest performing CEOs in the world today, Miles identifies 10 areas as essential to company survival right now, and provides tips for leaders facing these same challenges.

10 Critical Keys to Business Survival

Handling "social emotional events." "CEOs have to be absolutely aware of the issues important to the influencers in their space – whether it's LGBTQ issues or environmental waste or other areas of passion to customers, employees, investors, and the public at large."
Avoiding the dangers of success with a growth mindset: "Being a know-it-all company sucks the life out of high performance. How can you create paranoia in a healthy sense where you continuously want to grow and learn?"
Prioritizing investment in a business's digital future: "Getting a company to prioritize digitization is not like Star Trek where a CEO can just 'Make it so.' The CEO must make this imperative part of their drumbeat from the top so that it gets the attention and investment required."
Training the company, and the CEO, as an Olympic athlete: "Every day, every minute, you are looking at the organization and trying to make it better: better processes, better people, better innovation, better technology, better approaches, better customer interface. And the CEO job itself is more and more aging on your body, day in and day out – leaders have to think about their own fitness levels much more to withstand it."
Getting ahead of ESG "fails": "The ESG – environmental, social, and governance – agenda for many CEOs has gone from altruism to 'license to operate.' ESG is the new normal. In the social world that we live in now, you can lose your profit pool and lose your license to operate because you are not taking ESG seriously."
Adapting to major supply chain disruption: "The disruption of the globally synchronized supply chain – set off by the trade war but now given a powerful blow by the coronavirus shutdowns – is forcing a new thinking around bringing back local sourcing and adding that cost back into the system."
Bracing for stronger regulatory action: "Regulators around the world are feeling emboldened – supported by a growing populist movement and an increased disdain for the corporation. For CEOs, this means engage, engage, engage – understand your counterparty's perspective."
Building competitive muscle as growth gets harder: "All the cost-cutting since 2008 has resulted in the fact that there's not much left to do in many companies on the bottom line. So businesses now have to focus on the top line – and that's much harder. CEOs need to take their teams from their great cost-cutting capabilities to build their ability around innovation and go-to-market and grabbing market share."
Preparing for major economic shift: "All the market volatility right now and the heavy global impact of coronavirus on multiple industries across all regions means that CEOs must quickly determine how they respond and lead in this climate. The uncertainty around it all demands that leaders absorb a lot of this, prepare, and make decisions that keep the company fit and healthy."
Shifting from linear leadership to managing to an outcome: "Companies have turned from linear and vertical to horizontal and matrixed, and it's really about managing to an outcome. You look at the playing field. Who's on it? Who are my peers? Who do I need to build relationships with? Who do I need to seek and take advice from? Who do I need to ask for help from? That whole constellation of activities horizontally allows you to be effective and deliver an outcome. Muscling something over the line in a linear, vertical way is really not working very well for many people. They need to learn this horizontal toolkit."

TMG's C-Suite Intelligence podcast series covers a range of leadership lessons from decades of working with high-performing CEOs. Other episodes in the series include:

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information, please contact Davia Temin or Suzanne Oaks Brownstein of Temin and Company at 212.588.8788 or [email protected].

About the C-Suite Intelligence podcast
CEOs running the world's top companies don't start out that way – they pull ahead of their peers with behaviors and practices that make them the "best of the best." Stephen Miles and the team at TMG coach some of the world's most successful executives, helping them continuously up their game even as business conditions grow more complex every day. Through the C-Suite Intelligence podcast, learn the secrets of the highest performers, and use this intelligence to power your career.

About The Miles Group/TMG
TMG develops talent strategies for organizations, teams, and individuals – focusing on high-performance, world-class leadership. Through assessments and development, coaching, leadership transition planning, and organizational design, TMG helps clients cultivate exceptional talent from the C-suite to the next generation of leaders throughout the organization. Clients include many of the Fortune 100 as well as VC portfolio companies, firms in transition, and organizations around the globe and across industries. TMG has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, C-Suite, Entrepreneur, and Chief Executive. The firm is headquartered in New York City and operates globally. For more information, visit http://miles-group.com. Follow TMG on Twitter @TheMilesGroup and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-miles-group.

SOURCE The Miles Group/TMG