Why One CEO Is No Longer Enough

Jen Frances
Bold Ambition Magazine
3 min readMar 25, 2021

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The why and how of unleashing leaders at all levels

A new age of empowerment is dawning. As organisations look to rebuild for the future, a more collaborative approach to organisational growth is necessary for digital transformation and modernisation. Leadership at all levels can become a reality for organisations if they create the conditions where everyone can contribute broadly and strategically across the business. Empowerment is fundamental to a positive and fulfilling employee experience. How this can be achieved has typically been neglected, but this is an anomaly Jeremy Blain is correcting.

The Inner CEO arms executives with a blueprint to unleash leaders at all levels within their organisation and empowers individuals who are ready to step up as in-role CEOs.

Jeremy is a seasoned leadership and L&D consultant, coach and speaker with more than 20 years of experience leading and working with organisations across four continents.

Real-world examples are the focal point within The Inner CEO. Alongside Jeremy’s own specialist knowledge and extensive experience, interviews with global business leaders precede each chapter. Interviewees span start-ups, multi-nationals and include the Global Head of Learning and Development at Spotify, with each leader sharing actionable tips grounded in their own experiences. The impact of the fourth industrial revolution, the right conditions for in-role CEOs and how to supercharge organisational progress are focal points for each chapter.

The book also contains models and tools readers can implement in their own organisations to reap the benefits of leaders at all levels. Figures such as the 4Es Empowered Leadership Model, Five Point Validation to Identify Potential In-role CEOs and The 90-Day Roadmap, expertly guide the reader through the organisational shifts required to create a conducive culture for in-role CEOs to flourish.

The critical factors for success of in-role CEOs include an empowering leadership mindset at board and executive level, a flatter organisational structure, a can-do mindset in individuals to embrace and own leadership and a climate that supports experimentation. Implementing each of these critical success factors unleashes empowered and motivated in-role CEOs across the population, whether permanent employees or valued independents and contractors.

It is clear that the increasingly digital climate, coupled with the pandemic, has proved the importance of providing strategic growth opportunities to cultivate leaders at all levels with broad input. The Inner CEO provides an action-orientated blueprint for leaders to make this a reality and harness the power of supercharged individual and organisational growth. It is also an ideal read for individuals ready to step up, be noticed and make a real difference to the trajectory of their organisation.

Jeremy Blain is the Chief Executive of PerformanceWorks International (PWI), a company that helps organisations, executive boards, leaders and teams succeed in the digital climate amidst opportunity and uncertainty and to embed the required skills for successful modernisation. Jeremy combines leadership know-how as an international CEO and executive board officer in the UK and Asia with his experience as a learning and human capital professional of over 20 years. For seven years Jeremy was CEO for an international consultancy company based in Singapore, operating from India to the Pacific.

Jeremy was named International GameChanger© of the year for 2020 in the ACQ5 Global Awards for his work on digital transformation, HR transformation and workforce transformation. He is a regular keynote speaker, media commentator and the author of over 30 industry white papers.

The Inner CEO is published by Panoma Press and is available from Amazon

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