Creativity vs. Productivity, Left Brain vs. Right Brain, New Ideas vs. completing the project at hand.
There is a classic struggle between the chaotic, creative entrepreneurial people and the level-headed implementors that make sure things get done. I’ve seen this at every company I stepped into as a CEO or VP.
Once a company grows and has found success, it needs to slowly and naturally add more order and processes. Amazing new ideas become a bit less important as the ability to scale the business and maintain consistency are optimised. Growing revenue and a clear and consistent message become critical. Sometimes it’s the CEO who successfully makes the transition; often it’s not.
The super-entrepreneurial CEO can’t become a productivity person for very long. Their brain doesn’t work that way. They need a team around them to do the day-to-day.
Steve Jobs vs. Tim Cook, for example. Jobs never wanted to worry about productivity, he wanted to invent new things, push the limit. Luckily he had Cook to help him keep the company together. Now Apple has no one at the top to keep the crazy going. They have milked the innovations of Jobs for a decade. That’s why the products haven’t changed much, just vastly improved. Cook has a lot of people under him creating new innovations, but nothing giant has come out of Apple since Jobs passed away.
Also, as new features are added to a successful product, they must compliment, not compete with the current momentum and theme of the company. Don’t screw it up. Dial down the creativity. I’ve seen so many companies ruin their momentum at this point in the game, or panic and keep changing things too much.
I know this all sounds kind of obvious but it’s very difficult to execute properly. The threat of failure must be the motivator to become a little bit more grown up as a business founder and CEO –– or hire someone else for the next phase.
For entrepreneurs who haven’t reached success yet, it sounds like a good problem to have, right? Progress, revenue, validation; those are all things that seem daunting until they happen, if they ever happen.
But once a creative thinking CEO reaches these milestones, they have to readjust the knobs on their control panel, go back to being more creative, more magic and alchemy, because that’s their natural state and critical for more growth. Balancing the two disciplines is very difficult, but critical.
So no, nothing wrong with the Creative CEO archetype, they just need their complimentary team around them stretch their crazy minds.