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5 Success Tips From Top Tech CEOs

This article highlights 5 success tips with real-world applications from the top tech CEOs to help you tackle life’s challenges.

The world’s most successful businesspeople know a thing or two about success. Their expertise, however, goes beyond the boardroom. Reaching the top of your profession requires developing a range of talents and aptitudes for dealing with people and situations as well as products.

Here are 5 success tips from top tech CEOs:

1. Take Risks

I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo

marissa_mayer

Marissa Mayer / theverge.com

Before Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo, she was “Employee Number 20” at a then little-known technology company called Google. As an information technology pioneer, she’s widely regarded as one of the most brilliant minds in the industry.

Mayer didn’t get where she was by playing it safe. Her decision to leave Google in 2012 made waves, but it was worth the risk: Mayer became the CEO of Yahoo, and later cofounded Lumi Labs, an artificial technology incubator after Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017.

Takeaway

Pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is never easy. In business and in life, if you aren’t taking risks, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities.

2. Learn From Mistakes

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating.

Elon Musk, Tesla

Elon_Musk_2015-min-min

Elon Musk / bigspeak.com

Although it sounds counterintuitive, the majority of successful business leaders have failed along the way. From being ousted as the CEO of PayPal shortly after its merger to presiding over not one, but five spectacularly terrible rocket explosions, Musk is no stranger to failed business ventures.

The differentiating factor is that he kept innovating on his ideas as he gained experience, no matter how great the losses or how they were perceived.

Takeaway

In the long run, success isn’t defined by what you fail to do, but by your ability to learn and grow from each bump in the road. One winning idea can trump every single unsuccessful one.

3. Define Your Vision

A successful vision is aspirational, inspirational and specific.

Mark Hurd, Oracle

Mark_Hurd

Mark Hurd / appleinsider.com

In Hurd’s book, The Value Factor, he talks about how a company’s access to information gives them a competitive edge, and how they translate that information into an executable strategy to drive their success. Vision is one of the cornerstones of business strategy. Software companies like Oracle know firsthand that aspirational visions can transform entire industries.

Takeaway

It’s okay for your vision to be ambitious, but it also must incentivize positive behaviour, and above all, it must be measurable. Setting time-specific goals are a great way to hold yourself accountable for hitting those milestones.

4. Collaborate

My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of its parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.

Steve Jobs, Apple

steve-jobs1-min

Steve Jobs / swisslet.com

Takeaway

Teamwork is an extraordinarily powerful interpersonal skill. Proving you can handle your own responsibilities and add value to a larger group is how promotions, raises, and other opportunities arise.

5. Be Receptive to Change

Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.

Larry Page, Google

larry_page

Larry Page / pikbee.me

Adaptability is another core element of business strategy, especially in the technology sector.

CEOs like Page are highly cognizant of the way products and platforms develop. In order to become what is arguably the most influential online force, Google had to transform to address its users’ needs, reflect modern technology consumption, and adapt to evolving information security trends.

Silicon Valley is chock full of stories of failed startups and companies that could have been the next best thing but couldn’t quite keep up with changing times.

Being flexible is integral to growing as an individual and a professional. You’ll be more likely to recognize opportunities as they arise and be able to shift priorities in order to take advantage of them.

Conclusion

The world’s top CEOs have become successful in business in part because they had a clear grasp on the professional and interpersonal skills necessary to succeed in today’s workforce. If you work on these elements of professional development, you too may find yourself the next CEO of a Fortune 500 company one day.

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