10X CEO is the accelerated learning platform designed to help high-performing, venture-backed CEOs build valuable, enduring companies. Our primary premise is that elevated CEO skill is the most important predictor for building a valuable long-term business.
Some things we’ve learned about CEO skill:
• Six abilities comprise CEO skill (three personal and three business).
• These abilities are visible and quantifiable. They can usually be practiced and elevated…if the CEO trains like an athlete.
• The most significant business challenges are really CEO skill challenges.
• Required business abilities modify and expand as the company grows in scale and complexity.
• Going from an “8” to a “9” in CEO skill compounds the ultimate value of the business.
• Most CEOs are too busy working “in the business” to think much about their own skill and how it affects the future value of their business.
10X CEO Qualifications
• Must be nominated by a top-tier venture firm or current member of 10XCEO.
• Must lead a company with $10-$500 million in annual revenue with rapid growth rates.
• Must demonstrate the skill, desire, focus, and courage to function at a 10X level.
Who is in 10X CEO?
• 10 of our CEOs are in the 2022 “Cloud 100”, including 7 of the top 40 companies. A complete list is at 10X CEO.
• We currently have 92 CEOs in 13 cohorts. We have only 12 available openings and plan to cap the program for the foreseeable future when these openings are filled.
• We group our cohorts primarily by 3 revenue tiers (1) +$100 million (2) $30-$100 million
(3) $10 – $30 million.
• Our CEOs work in cohorts that are built carefully based on the company size and CEO experience.
The Four Compounding Levers of 10X CEO
• Working with closely matched peers of high-performing CEOs on their own real-time business priorities.
• Using a framework that focuses each CEO on their most important real-time priorities that makes their effectiveness visible and improvement possible.
• Having an experienced CEO Coach who customizes the program for each individual 10X CEO.
• Utilizing the combined intelligence of the 10X CEO network through benchmarking and best practice sharing.
How do 10X CEOs Perform Differently?
The ability to learn at an accelerated rate is one of the key abilities that 10X CEOs assess and expand. Let’s look at the differences between 10X CEOs and most venture-backed CEOs.
| The CEO Majority | 10X CEOs | |
|---|---|---|
| CEO Job Description | 1. Raising the value of my company consistent basis. 2. Beating the plan. |
1. Creating highly desirable business/profit models. 2. Building great processes for sales and customer delight. 3. Creating a culture of high-performing individuals and teams. |
| Stated Learning Goals | My company and team look to me for the answers. Training is for people earlier in their career. | Laser focus on the top three priorities that will change the trajectory of the business…and learn everything about them. I want to be world-class and I intend to train like a pro athlete. |
| CEO Skill – Weapons of Choice | 1. Personal experience, school of hard knocks. 2. Feedback – great job, you beat the plan or – lousy job, you need to do better next time. 3. Decisions & Goals – you work it out with your team. 4. Best Practices – My own experience, consultants if I need them, maybe asking advice from CEO friends. |
1. Real benchmarking – written documents are shared and compared with a “very smart network.” Cumulative learning. 2. Feedback – Skill is evaluated by an outsider and you have a practice plan. Your progress is compared with CEO peers. 3. Decisions & Goals – you write everything down and share it inside and outside the company, it becomes a learning document. 4. “Plug and play” best practices that have been tested in your “smart people” network. |
Highly accelerated learning for CEOs has the following elements:
1. The learning must involve a cycle of feedback (especially when benchmarked with CEO peers) practice and more feedback. The practice should mostly (but not always) be on the CEO’s own decisions, problems, and opportunities.
2. Learning must be written so that it can be shared, studied, and improved.
3. The CEO develops and uses a “smart people” network. It can be 5 or 50. If the network is smart and is used effectively, it will almost always have better answers than the CEO’s own personal experience. When done right, the collective intelligence of the network grows and its value increases over time.
4. Learning experiences are multiplied by studying outside the CEO’s normal circle. Instead of just looking at their own industry business/profit model, they study models from other industries. Instead of evaluating just their own VP sales, they might compare with 10 others from their “smart people” network.
5. Learning opportunities, methods, and best practices are shared and cascaded throughout the CEO’s company. This creates a geometric effect on the collective intelligence of the entire organization.