10 years as CEO: the answer has nothing to do with strategy

A former manager of mine , now a mentor , is celebrating his 10th year as CEO of a major international industrial group.

Repeated crises. An unstable market. Monthly P&L battles. Heavy constraints.

I asked him one direct question:

“How do you keep going?”

His answer:

“By keeping my beginner’s mind. And always having a project that feeds my creativity.”

I appreciated the simplicity of the answer. And its depth.

This isn’t naivety. It’s regulation.

The data backs what field observations have shown for years: according to a study cited by GPO Magazine, 66% of executives report professional burnout, a figure that has surged in recent years, exceeding the global average.

We talk a lot about executive resilience. We rarely talk about inner freshness.

What drains a CEO isn’t intensity. It’s the loss of lightness. The absence of breathing room. The days when everything becomes too serious, too constrained, too controlled.

What this looks like in practice

Laughter with the team, sometimes silly laughter.

A well-timed joke that deflates tension.

Side projects that reconnect to a sense of play.

Encounters that spark curiosity.

Deliberate pauses. Moments of simply being present, without the executive role.

Nothing spectacular. And yet, entirely strategic.

These micro-interruptions regulate the nervous system. Creativity regulates stress. Lightness restores judgment. A brain under permanent pressure eventually makes decisions in survival mode.

Keeping a beginner’s mind isn’t being naive

It’s staying alive in a role that can become mechanical.

It’s preserving the capacity to be surprised, to question, to play even under maximum complexity.

And often, it’s what distinguishes white-knuckling it… from lasting with genuine presence.

What this changes in my coaching work

One of the keys I work on with clients is reactivating freedom of thought.

An executive can be intelligent, experienced, strategic, and charismatic and still be running on an automated survival programme behind the scenes.

That’s where inner freshness becomes a strategic asset. Not a luxury. A cognitive resource.

And inner indicators are sometimes worth as much as a P&L.