The career path to reach the CEO position is unorthodox. To become the captain who will command the company and its crew, there’s a natural growth dynamic necessary for this professional to develop the skills needed to connect with and inspire teams, guiding them toward desired goals. But the big question those aspiring to this position ask is: what’s the best way to achieve this position? And what other experiences do they need to contribute to this journey?
Many studies indicate that a large proportion of current CEOs previously held the CFO role. Indeed, this is a highly competitive advantage on the way to the CEO position, and it’s often the most logical path to it.
The Chief Financial Officer is often the one who holds the “key to the safe” of a company. They oversee the company’s commercial department, internal projects, and maintain banking relationships that are crucial to the company’s financial health. Because they handle responsibilities that are more sensitive to business operations and have access to highly relevant internal information, this consequently makes them one of the professionals with the greatest degree of credibility and internal reach, compared to other executives.
As they have a more technical bias in their responsibilities, they typically surround themselves with strategic people from other areas (commercial, marketing, sales, etc.) to assist them in their progression to the CEO position – all of these characteristics justify the greater predominance of CFOs who precede the Chief Executive Officer.
However, even though this dynamic ultimately prevails and is the most “natural” in the market, it isn’t a scientific or rigid process to follow, and it doesn’t exclude others from other areas from achieving this position. In practice, those who wish to pursue this path must focus not only on developing the necessary technical skills but also on improving themselves as leaders of people and processes, possessing the ability to inspire and deliver results to advance over time to more senior positions, shifting from being a vertical professional to a transversal one.
After all, a good CEO must have a strategic and thorough vision of all areas of the company. Even if they don’t have extensive knowledge or in-depth expertise in all areas, they need to see the bigger picture intelligently and know how to make things happen. This, in addition to surrounding themselves with strategic people who assist them in this decision-making process, whom they trust to better understand everything that’s happening internally so they know what to do to improve the results achieved.
The CEO position is undeniably one of the most coveted in the market in terms of career progression. While it was long seen as a position that would bring huge bonuses to its occupants, today these references also highlight and clarify its burden—not only in terms of responsibility, but also the solitude of holding it, in terms of its decision-making and relevance to corporate progression and prosperity.
This greater clarity, even though it also caused many people to no longer strongly desire to occupy this position, was an extremely positive move in awakening individual self-reflection about what they want in their professional careers.
Those aspiring to become a CEO must clearly understand the complexities of this position’s responsibilities. This ensures that, when faced with a crossroads, they don’t abandon ship, instead demonstrating the resilience and persistence to overcome difficulties and advance the company in its segment. It is, indeed, a lonely position, but for those truly willing to accept the challenge, it can bring exceptional benefits to their reputation in the market.
