Fire Yourself Every January

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Every Jan­u­ary 1^st, Nan­cy McK­ay fires her­self as CEO of McK­ay CEO Forums.

Then she rehires herself.

Not as a for­mal­i­ty. As a gen­uine dis­ci­pline. She asks: giv­en what’s chang­ing in the mar­ket, what does the com­pa­ny actu­al­ly need from its CEO this year? And just as impor­tant­ly, how do I need to grow to be that person?

Nan­cy Dis­cuss­es Fir­ing Herself

The CEO Who Keeps Growing

One of the real­i­ties of being a long-tenured CEO is that the com­pa­ny keeps chang­ing, and the role has to keep chang­ing with it. What the busi­ness need­ed from you when it was $20M is not what it needs from you at $50M or $500M. The deci­sions, the time hori­zon, the tal­ent around you, the strate­gic bets, all of it shifts.

And here’s the encour­ag­ing part. In my expe­ri­ence, most founder CEOs can grow their com­pa­ny as large as they want to take it, as long as they keep evolv­ing along­side it. You rarely need a dif­fer­ent CEO. You almost always just need to become a bet­ter ver­sion of the one you already are.

The only real trap is stand­ing still: con­tin­u­ing to solve the prob­lems you’ve always solved, run­ning the meet­ings you’ve always run, work­ing on the hori­zon that used to be exact­ly right. None of that is a fail­ing. It’s the pull of what once worked. The anti­dote is a habit of hon­est reflection.

What the Rehire Ques­tion Actu­al­ly Does

Nancy’s Jan­u­ary rit­u­al is pow­er­ful because it forces an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion with your­self before the year gets going. She’s real­ly ask­ing three things:

What does the mar­ket need from this com­pa­ny right now? Not what we’ve always done, but what the oppor­tu­ni­ty actu­al­ly requires.

What does the com­pa­ny need from its CEO to cap­ture that? Dif­fer­ent stage, dif­fer­ent skills, dif­fer­ent time allocation.

How do I need to grow to be that CEO? What do I build, what do I let go of, what do I hand to some­one else?

That third ques­tion is the hard­est one any leader can ask, and it’s com­plete­ly human to want to skip it. Our iden­ti­ty is wrapped up in the role. Ask­ing it takes real courage. But the very best lead­ers I know, includ­ing ones I’ve watched take com­pa­nies from $30M to $300M, build the courage to ask it every year, and to answer it honestly.

What I Notice in Plan­ning Sessions

I see this in strate­gic plan­ning ses­sions all the time. We do an hon­est audit of where the com­pa­ny is, where it wants to go, and what it needs, and very often there’s a gap between where the busi­ness is head­ing and where the CEO is spend­ing their time. That’s not a knock on the CEO. It’s one of the most nat­ur­al things in growth. Often the CEO is still the chief prob­lem solver when the com­pa­ny needs more of a vision­ary, still step­ping in per­son­al­ly when it’s ready for sys­tems. Each of those instincts is the very thing that worked before.

So the con­ver­sa­tion I get to have, gen­tly but hon­est­ly, is a gen­er­ous one: the CEO you’ve been got the com­pa­ny all the way here, and with some fresh think­ing, you can become the CEO who takes it to the next lev­el. That’s not an insult. It’s the most hope­ful ques­tion in the building.

Growth Mind­set Isn’t a Poster on the Wall

Nan­cy talked about growth mind­set as the num­ber one dif­fer­en­tia­tor between the CEOs who thrive and the ones who plateau. I love the way she explained it. It’s not about pos­i­tiv­i­ty or read­ing the right books. It’s about being will­ing to look at your­self clear­ly, your role, your habits, your effec­tive­ness, and to have the courage to change.

This is real­ly just fresh think­ing turned on our­selves. The same way fresh think­ing keeps a company’s strat­e­gy sharp, this kind of reflec­tion keeps us on our toes instead of com­pla­cent. It can be uncom­fort­able, even a lit­tle painful. But that dis­com­fort is exact­ly what forces us to keep grow­ing and get­ting bet­ter, so that we don’t become the bot­tle­neck, and so we nev­er need to step out of the role.

Try It This Week

You don’t need to wait until Jan­u­ary, and you don’t need to do it exact­ly the way Nan­cy does. Block an hour some­where you won’t be inter­rupt­ed, and answer three ques­tions honestly:

1. What does the com­pa­ny need from its CEO right now?

2. How am I actu­al­ly spend­ing my time, and where’s the gap?

3. How do I need to grow to close it?

Then write down one thing you’ll stop, start, or change, and share it with some­one who’ll hold you account­able. The lead­ers who keep scal­ing aren’t the ones who got lucky. They’re the ones who keep ask­ing these ques­tions about them­selves, and keep grow­ing into the answers, before any­one else has to.

Watch the Full Inter­view Below

About Nan­cy McKay

Nan­cy McK­ay is the founder and CEO of McK­ay CEO Forums, one of North Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing peer advi­so­ry orga­ni­za­tions for CEOs and senior exec­u­tives. For more than two decades, she has built a com­mu­ni­ty where top lead­ers come togeth­er to tack­le their hard­est chal­lenges, share what’s actu­al­ly work­ing, and grow along­side peers who under­stand the weight of the chair. She is the author of It’s Lone­ly at the Top, a can­did look at the unique pres­sures of the CEO role and what it takes to lead well over the long haul. Based in Van­cou­ver, Nan­cy is one of the most respect­ed voic­es in CEO devel­op­ment in North America.