Two companies at once

Every company is always, under the surface, two companies at once.

The first company is the result of your past and it is what the company is today. The customers you currently have, the products you currently offer and so forth.

The second company is the company of tomorrow. The company that you will become. The customers you will have in the future. The products you will offer but are not yet offering.

We still call the leader of a company CEO. That’s Chief Executive Officer. But that title is all about the first company. The dictionary translation of “executive” is: “having the power to put plans or actions into effect”.

Most companies miss another CEO, the leader of the second company. That would be a Chief Exploring Officer. This is about figuring out what the plans or actions should be — a completely different task.

Jeff Bezos once said: “People congratulate me when we have a good quarter, but I always think: ‘Thanks, but this quarter is the result of what we started 3 years ago. I work on what will be a quarter 3 years from now.’”

Bezos is a Chief Exploring Officer.

Typically, the CEO of a company is supposed to lead both of these companies but it’s telling how large percentage of the attention is spent on the first one vs the second.