Hands-on CEOs are central to achieving this. Laurels – you must have the culture and systems in place to manage that level of disruption on a sustainable basis. The challenge for CEOs is not disruption itself so much as the fact that disruption is a constant in business these days. Because for all your great ideas and interesting innovations, if you can’t plan and execute them they just don’t come about. It’s all the boring stuff, but you have to be perfect at it.
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You’ve got to builda team and learn how to manage. Get better at planning, preparation, execution and reviewing – good people, good support and good structure. It’s what will set you apart from the competition. These are good investments and you should make them as soon as you can.Įxecute, execute, execute. Maybe a few days of someone who, full-time, would be a bit too big for the business. A good one, someone who really gets it – I’m not talking about a bookkeeper. I mean, it’s OK to fail – if you’ve never failed, you haven’t tried hard enough – but make sure your failures are small, not big. You’ve also got to have a real fear of failure. You have to be the opposite of relaxed, because the minute you think you’ve made it, someone else will be in there eating your lunch. If you start thinking too much about the money, you can end up making the wrong decisions.” I’ve never worked for money, and I never will. “It’s been quite a long journey and the reason I’m still here is because I enjoy it.
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In a hugely varied career, Dixon has sold burgers on Southend seafront, been a barman in St Tropez, a miner in Australia and a farmhand in Asia. It’s not your typical FTSE 250 CEO’s journey, but Dixon believes it has helped him build the resilience needed for his later business success. We’re saying the goal here is bigger than one company can handle, so let’s partner and do it more quickly.” “We’ve changed tack because we need to grow more quickly. It’s a less capital-intensive way of expanding at speed, he says. So following last year’s flurry of takeover bids from three private equity houses – Lone Star, Starwood and TDR – he has also completely revamped IWG’s business model, divesting property assets and putting in a franchise system. “Continuous innovation” is another one of Dixon’s mantras. Our customers want different things, so we have developed new products to look after their changing requirements. I still spend about a quarter of my time with our customers and every time I meet them I learn something new.” “Your job as CEO is to pilot a way to the future while still delivering results today.”ĭisruptive competition is also better for the customer, he says: “It causes faster evolution – it happens with bacteria, and it happens with businesses. “Digital changes everything,” says Dixon. It’s vital for leaders to keep their view focused on the outside world, ready to spot tech-driven changes quickly. A company that is grown-up is a company that’s about to get to pensionable age.” You have to hire people who are energetic and innovative, and you’ve got to keep hungry and edgy. “This company is still run like a start-up.
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This combative, glass half-full approach mirrors the findings of the latest KPMG CEO Outlook Survey, in which 93 per cent of UK CEOs see disruption as more of an opportunity than a threat, and 77 per cent say that their growth prospects depend on their ability to challenge business norms.ĭixon uses the spur of competition to keep his company lean, forward-looking and agile. You invest and you eventually create some return on that investment.” Business is about creating value, not the other way round.
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“The equity we’ve put in to get to be much bigger than they are today is a very small amount. There’s no difference except they started with $10 billion and we started with zero. Dixon enjoys the challenge of taking the newcomer on: “They’ve made our industry fashionable. Since 2010, however, there has been a new kid on IWG’s block, in the shape of WeWork, whose deep pockets and appeal to footloose tech entrepreneurs have enabled it to expand at breakneck pace. He has since grown it into a company that has more than 3,300 business centres in 110 countries and made a pre-tax profit of £139m on turnover of £2.5bn last year. Dixon founded his business IWG (then called Regus) back in 1989, providing serviced offices to pay-as-you-go customers. “For 25 years we had to pioneer the whole thing on our own, but now, with others doing it, it helps to create an industry. “A rising tide floats all boats,” he says. But the arrival of new fast-moving rivals can be as much an opportunity as a threat. It’s all a matter of perspective, reckons Mark Dixon, CEO of IWG, the leading global workspace provider. The challenge of disruptive competition is a fact of 21st century business life – even for those firms that started as disruptors themselves.