What Key Trends Are Impacting Mid-Market CEOs Today?

What trends are impacting the way you lead your business? How do you address them and, more importantly, how do you take advantage of them to strengthen your position in your markets?  How does the CEO of a mid-market organization grow and thrive into today’s constantly evolving business environment?

Last week, I was given a chance to listen in as Liz Claman facilitated an enthusiastic and lively discussion with CEOs from leading mid-market organizations.  The host for the event was Roger Nanny of Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services. He was joined by the following; CEO Charles Besser, Founder, President and CEO of Intersport, Michael Dowling, President and CEO, Northshore-LIJ Health System, and Steven Rudnitsky, President and CEO, Dolce Hotels and Resorts.  If you would like to see the video you can find it at Deloitte Virtual Perspectives.

I came away with several key trends that will impact your growing mid-market business. It’s interesting that many of my best clients are talking about similar challenges and how they might gain a market leadership position by leveraging these trends to successfully grow their business. Today, we talk about these key tends.  Over the next several months, we’ll continue to share different implementable strategies you can use to keep growing your organizations. The mid-market leaders I know are always looking for simple ways to keep growing.

The first major trend that was discussed is how to attract and retain good talent for your mid-market organization. Each leader expressed that the challenge to find great people is their number one concern as they lead their organizations into 2015.

The three CEOs all felt a large part of their roles as CEO included uncovering great talent, developing it, and retaining it over the longer term. They also felt as the economy picks up, this challenge continues to grow.  I will share several thoughts on this key trend in future blogs, but all three CEOs felt the impending skills gap as one of the factors they must address if they hope to remain leaders in their markets. They also felt it was critical for them to work with educational institutions to help align an individual’s education with future career opportunities in their markets. It requires balancing both long and short term thinking to build a successful culture.

The second major trend that was discussed was employee education and training. All the leaders felt that training and development needs were changing in their organizations. The skills gap continues to challenge mid-markets organizations. Over 64% of mid-market organizations agree that it is difficult for them to find new employees with the skills and education required to meet the needs of their business. They also believe that unless they continue identifying and developing key people within their organization who can take on additional responsibilities, their organizations growth could stall.

The third major trend moving beyond today is they are constantly looking for great people for their team. Their recruiting efforts are moving into a more proactive process for identifying and nurturing people for their growing organizations. They are looking for exceptional people who can make a major contribution to the organization’s success. To combat this challenge, these organizations are building sustainable networks that allow them to build a pipeline of great talent available as their business continues to grow. They all stressed that recruiting is no longer a single event relationship, but an ongoing process that successful organizations must go through if they hope to succeed over the longer term.

We’ve covered three major trends today on recruiting, developing, and retaining key team members. On Friday, we take on a topic that is near and dear to any successful mid-market business entrepreneur’s success: How do you build and sustain a great business culture? See you Friday as we share a secret of high performing organizations we learned from these successful CEOs.