So you’ve just gotten a promotion. You’re settling into your new role and getting a feel for its responsibilities and parameters. It’s a good time to find a comfortable rhythm.

But Kellogg’s Sanjay Khosla warns that you may not want to get too cozy or else you may not be able to fly when you need to.

This week, we take a look at how you can leave your comfort zone. Plus, a look at a board’s top responsibility: succession.

Forging ahead

For any business leader looking to succeed, taking big risks is not exactly a top priority. Instead, sticking with the status quo can offer reassurance to those around you.

But it’s important to avoid swinging the pendulum too far away from risk and toward safety. In a recent Insight article, Khosla offers advice for leaders to ensure they don’t get stuck in their ways.

“Everyone has a choice in life. You can either be cozy—or you can fly,” says Khosla, the former senior executive at Unilever and Kraft International. “My hypothesis is that it’s very dangerous to be cozy. You have to fly.”

To do so, you need to look toward the future instead of banking on repeating past wins. What worked yesterday may not be what works tomorrow—and may keep you from achieving significant new gains.

You also need to dare to dream big and challenge yourself and your teams to disrupt yourselves and do new things, rather than just considering and analyzing them to death.

“When you set ambitious goals and give teams the freedom to fly, amazing things happen,” Khosla says. “Ordinary people can do extraordinary things just by working together differently!”

Read more at Kellogg Insight.

Keeping an eye out for the next CEO

In a recent Forbes article, Kellogg’s Harry Kraemer makes the case for corporate boards facing their most-important responsibility—CEO succession—head on.

“Even if the current CEO is doing a great job, the board needs to ensure that there is a plan in place should the unexpected happen—the euphemistic ‘getting hit by a bus” scenario,’” Kraemer writes.

But it’s often a topic that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, he writes. Boards might sidestep the issue or lack well-developed strategies to implement in the worst-case scenario.

Kraemer notes that companies often short-change succession planning due to three reasons: the CEO lacking self-confidence, the CEO being overconfident and considering themselves irreplaceable, and the board running on autopilot.

But there is some good news. It’s never been a better time for succession candidates to be able to show what they’re made of to their boards.

“Over the past two decades, an increasing number of boards have become more vocal about wanting to interact with company executives being groomed as possible CEO succession candidates,” he writes.

“With greater breadth and depth across leadership development and succession planning, the board can help ensure that the company has the right people in the leadership pipeline. And that is good news for all involved.”

See you next week,

Fred Schmalz, Business and Art Editor
Kellogg Insight