Some months ago, we published a reflection on the importance of the CEO and the skills they should have in start-ups. This article was based on a Harvard Business Review. We talked about topics such as charism, leadership, decision-making and involvement skills and adaptability, and their combination as CEO innate abilities.
We received some days ago an online publication from PWC called “IDEAS”. It was about “How to think as a CEO” and introduced a really interesting concept we wish to share with you: “Applied Curiosity”.
According to PWC:
“People with applied curiosity are able to question everything rigorously until they understand how things work and afterwards, to do them better. They look at everything with a curious mentality. Their curiosity goes from understanding changes in consumer habits to the latest macroeconomic trends affecting their sectors of activity”.
In other words, having applied curiosity means being able to constantly rethink reality and to question everything, trying different ways to get new experiences. As a result, the person tries to improve some models and processes. It seems easy but not everybody can constantly question the reality around us. In a world that is constantly evolving and at a time in which disruption (the breaking down of traditional models from various perspectives) is a feature that has come to stay, applied curiosity is a quality that perhaps should be considered when talking about CEOs. Especially if they want to seek funding from FF.
Is it essential for a start-up CEO to constantly think about how to improve his business model? Is it necessary for a CEO to have learning capacity and mentality to go to uncharted territories? Is it necessary for a CEO to have forward-looking approach? Our answer is YES. Without the ability to continuously rethink the environment to improve and find competitive advantages it is almost impossible to address the need for scaling and consolidation of a startup and / or a company in general. However, questioning projects does not mean, in any case, “losing focus” on what is important or guide the company through “occurrences” without meaning. Being curious is good, having too much is dangerous.
The role of the CEO as a leader is important for us. The CEO should perform several functions:
- ringing the team together and considering it as part of the company’s development.
- making reliable and trustworthy decisions with a long-term horizon. They should make these decisions as quick as possible.
- Being reliable and trustworthy and adding the concept aforementioned: applied curiosity.
We know all these factors together do not ensure the success of the startup, but they are a solid foundation on which to try to build a business model.
Have a good weekend!
Fellow Funders team
