edX Rise to Leadership: Become a CEO

Overview
If you’re ambitious, it’s natural to aspire to be the leader of an organization. A lot of people in business want to be a CEO; to lead and shape an organization. Many, however, quickly discover that ambition alone is not enough to achieve this goal. Some ascend to the C-suite or leave to start their own venture, only to discover that leading a business - even one's own - requires not just determination but a number of unanticipated skills.

If you’ve pictured yourself in the corner office, want to report directly to a CEO, or have the goal of consulting with or advising a CEO, this course will benefit you.

The course explores six competencies of a successful CEO:

• Getting results. The ability to achieve ambitious operating goals by working at all levels of an organization;
• Creating culture. The ability to articulate core values – such as customer value creation, integrity, and respect for the individual, win employee buy-in of the values, and create processes to ensure that culture is used in hiring and promotion decisions;
• Attracting talent. The ability to attract and motivate a highly talented team that can set ambitious goals and achieve them;
• Driving innovation. The ability to create an environment that encourages talented employees to generate new ideas that spur revenue growth;.
• Formulating strategy. The ability to analyze a company’s future opportunities and to develop and execute strategies to capture those opportunities; and
• Communicating with stakeholders. The ability to communicate effectively with the board, investors, and communities.

An initial objective assessment of strengths and weaknesses will help you decide if you’re a “natural” CEO, if you can become a CEO by improving existing skills, or if you should pursue other options. The skills learned in this course will also benefit individual contributors and those who manage people and teams. It offers a greater understanding of how a CEO thinks and acts - insights that can help anyone be more effective in a job.

This course will give you insight into how CEOs view strategic challenges, formulate solutions, and take action - and expose the path from individual contributor to the top job. Through case studies, group challenges, and feedback from current CEOs, you’ll explore six key skills that make an effective CEO, and form the foundation of their strategic work.

What you'll learn

• How CEOs get results
• The power of creating an effective, positive culture in your organization
• How to attract top talent
• How to create an environment that drives innovation
• Analyzing future opportunities to formulate strategy
• Effective communication with stakeholders - the board, investors, and communities

Taught by
Peter Cohan

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