---
type: Web Page
title: "What Are the CEO’s worried About? Getting the Right Skills at the Right time for the Right Purpose!"
canonical: https://jimcarroll.com/2017/03/what-are-the-ceos-worried-about-getting-the-right-skills-at-the-right-time-for-the-right-purpose/
updated: 2017-03-14T17:27:16+00:00
---

# What Are the CEO’s worried About? Getting the Right Skills at the Right time for the Right Purpose!

So … last week I was in Miami, and did a talk on business disruption, transformation and innovation for about 30 CEO’s of companies in the healthcare, tech and IT sectors, on behalf of a private equity firm. The meeting also included a wide ranging discussion with a panel of ‘mentor’ CEO’s.

This is one of several events of this type I’ve done; through the years, an increasing number of private wealth, family offices and private equity firms have brought me in for talks, including a keynote in Greece where there was about $1 trillion of value in the room. At the conclusion, I managed to query all of these CEO’s on the biggest perceived challenges they face going forward.

/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CEOPoll.jpg

Check out their response! Talent and skills! Speed of change!

The issues in the poll were the ones that *they* raised as major concerns, during the discussion part of the meeting, and had to do with these issues:

- how does a CEO establish an appropriate balance between the necessity for leadership and the criticality of strategy time?

- how to best manage the speed of change

- how to align their team to emerging trends, challenge and opportunities

- getting the right talent at the right time for the right purpose

- establishing an overall organizational culture of speed

- how to manage the disconnect between needing to change and historical legacy (as well as legacy IT)

- managing more complex consumer expectations

- when to jump onto a major trend

This is just so interesting from several perspectives, but first and foremost is this: I’ve long explained to my clients that a key issue for any organization going forward is this: “*getting the right skills at the right time for the right purpose.” *

Put this in the context of several recent headlines I’ve used in events : GE hiring more tech talent and purchasing startups than Silicon Valley companies; Ford hiring 27,000 computer tech staff to help it in the race for self-driving cars; and other similar issues.

Clearly talent is a major issue going forward, and workforce and skills innovation is rising to the top!