Organizations today are fundamentally different from legacy organizations. Leading these organizations needs not just new set of skills and competencies, but a wholly different mindset. The hyperconnected customer is more aware and makes decisions and choices differently. The power balance has tilted in favor of employees and consumers, who own the brand.
This is a shift that has gathered momentum. The organization is part of an ecosystem.
More CFOs are being considered for CEO roles today than ever before—and for good reason. They bring rigor, risk discipline, and a deep understanding of how value is created. But even the most strategic CFOs face three key shifts when preparing for the CEO chair:
From inward focus to outward sensing: Finance leaders are brilliant at managing internal complexity. But CEOs must look outward—toward customers, markets, competitors, regulators, and culture.
From cost discipline to innovation thinking: Many CFOs excel at optimizing the business. CEOs need to imagine entirely new businesses. CFOs often work with high-performing specialists. CEOs must inspire a workforce with diverse motivations, experiences, and worldviews. In moving from CFO to CEO, they go from leading a team to leading an organization.
These shifts aren’t just relevant to CFOs. They mirror the gap all senior leaders must cross when stepping into enterprise leadership.
5 Ways to Build the skills a CEO Needs
Strategy No 1: Shadow a CEO
Not just to watch decisions—but to observe how they handle complexity, how they communicate in crises, and how they hold the trust of multiple stakeholders. Very often the CEO has to listen to everything and then step back and reframe the issue. Listen to this audio clip
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I spoke to Shiv Shivakumar, ex-Chairman of PepsiCo India and Operating Partner of Advent He spoke about three books every CEO should read. Here is what he said
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Which books should a CEO read? Share your recommendation
Here is the rest of the conversation with Shiv. Click the link below: https://www. linkedin. com/events/theceomindset-inconversationwit7363751925332221952/theater/
Strategy No 2: Build a Diverse Network
Talk to people who think differently—designers, marketers, engineers, social activists. Talking to people from different cohorts can be illuminating. Get a 25-year-old to teach you TikTok. Ask them how they get career advice or ideas on fashion. Then go check out those sources. Ask someone from another function in your organization how they would improve the profitability of your business. You will start to see a different perspective. Social Media plays a bigger role than what you can ever imagine. Influence doesn’t look like it used to. It comes from listening. Use social media to listen.
Read the other three strategies here
https://abhijitbhaduri. com/2025/08/30/why-cfos-are-becoming-the-new-ceos-and-what-it-takes-to-make-the-leap/
Hire The Beatles – Not Just Lennon Or Paul
When a CEO joins a new organization, they bring in their old trusted team. That team has worked with each with minimal friction and can probably finish each other’s sentences. We have seen it in movies like Oceans 11. Watch this video of the heist team being assembled.
You get a fully functional team without having to hire them in instalments, and not have to onboard them (most organizations do a terrible job of onboarding people) in the span of a week and then put them through Team Building Workshops that involve doing Trust Falls (ask someone if you have not done one). These are painfully inefficient and ineffective ideas.
What do you instead? Read this to find out
Why write a restaurant review
Smitha Menon (Check out her Instagram handle @smitha. men) wrote an interesting post in her column for Mint. She talks about what she hopes her reviews would do.
I usually take notes when I read.
from my notebook
Caricature of Alex Karp
The CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp has a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University and actually spent years as a philosophy professor before entering the tech world, making him one of the more academically unconventional Silicon Valley leaders. You can see him swimming in San Francisco Bay year-round regardless of weather conditions, which he credits for maintaining mental clarity. Despite running a major tech company, Karp famously doesn’t carry a smartphone and prefers to stay disconnected from constant digital communication, believing it helps him think more clearly.
I think he can be a great subject for a portrait with his hairstyle and physique and glasses. Here is my attempt. Tell me what you think of it.
Leave me a comment. I respond to all of them if they use more than one sentence in the comment!! Yes we have our quality control parameters too.
