Accidental CEOs: What Designers Were Never Taught About Running a Business

You’re Already in the C-Suite (Whether You Meant to Be or Not)

Most people who eventually arrive in the C-suite (director level in a large organisation) do not drift there casually.

They are shaped - sometimes carefully, sometimes brutally - on the way up.

Over years, often decades, they absorb a set of learned behaviours that mark them out as serious commercial leaders. They may receive formal training. They may be mentored by a demanding manager who refines their thinking through iteration and feedback. Or they may learn the hard way, through mistakes, misjudgements, competition with peers, public embarrassment, and the slow forging of professional judgement under pressure.

However it happens, by the time they reach senior executive level they have usually been “bashed into shape” by experience. They understand how to prepare, how to communicate succinctly, how to make decisions, how to take responsibility, and how to respect the time and attention of others. They know how to behave when the stakes are high because they have practised doing so, repeatedly, on the ascent.

Designers, by contrast, rarely have this apprenticeship.

Nobody becomes a residential interior designer by accident. It is a conscious, often long-held ambition rooted in creativity, aesthetics and the desire to shape beautiful environments. But becoming a business owner is frequently incidental: an administrative necessity rather than a chosen professional identity. One day you are a talented practitioner offering a service; the next you are running a company.

And with that shift, whether you intended it or not, you step directly into the C-suite.

The term “C-suite” simply refers to the most senior leadership roles within a business:

Chief Executive Officer

Chief Financial Officer

Chief Operating Officer

Chief Marketing Officer

Chief Technology Officer

All the ‘C’s.

In a large organisation these roles are distributed across several experienced individuals.

In a design studio, they are all held by one person: you.

You are responsible for direction, money, delivery, visibility, reputation, and future-proofing.

You are, in effect, the entire executive team.

Yet unlike traditional corporate leaders, you have not spent fifteen years climbing “the greasy pole”, absorbing the disciplines and professional standards of senior leadership along the way.

You have been catapulted - overnight - from the pavement to the boardroom.

One day you were focused primarily on design; the next you are expected to think and behave like the director of a serious commercial enterprise.

This creates a quiet but profound gap.

It's time to shift away from what might be called Pavement Behaviour:

• reactive
• informal
• improvisational
• often brilliant creatively but unfocused commercially

And instead, work to acquire C-Suite Behaviour:

• clarity
• preparation
• decisiveness
• accountability
• respect for time and resources - both their own and other people’s

The good news is that these behaviours are not personality traits bestowed on a fortunate few. They are learned disciplines. They can be adopted consciously and practised deliberately. And once in place, they change not only how a business performs, but how its founder is perceived: by clients, collaborators and by the market itself.

This article explores some of the most important learned behaviours of effective C-suite leaders, the ones rarely taught to creative founders, yet transformative once understood.

Here are the “invisible” C-suite behaviours that look like personality from the outside, but are mostly learned discipline. They’re often a revelation to founders because nobody ever explicitly teaches them.

1. They treat time as a valuable resource

In well-run organisations, time together is used carefully.

Preparation happens beforehand. Information is shared in advance wherever possible. When people meet, it is to discuss, decide and move things forward - not to improvise or bring others up to speed from scratch. This isn’t formality for its own sake; it is a mark of professional respect.

Good updates tend to be purposeful: where we are, what this means, and what might need to happen next.

2. They make complex things easier to understand

One of the most valuable executive skills is clarity.

Effective leaders start reports with the main point - the conclusion, which is known as the Executive Summary - and then provide context or evidence if needed. They distinguish between what is known, what it might mean, and what they propose to do. And they use simple frameworks deliberately, because they make complex situations easier to grasp and discuss.

Clarity saves an enormous amount of time.

3. They focus on judgement rather than sheer effort

Many founders are extremely hardworking: it's too easy to simply fall into busyness for busyness's sake. Executive thinking adds another dimension: stepping back to assess: what is my effort actually producing?

Instead of tracking how busy things feel, they look at outcomes and constraints. Most businesses have one or two genuine bottlenecks at any given time. Identifying and addressing these tends to create far more progress than trying to do everything at once. (This is a key lesson to carry into your interior design business). 

It also becomes easier, over time, to decline work or activity that doesn’t serve the larger direction of the business - calmly and without apology.

4. They expect their thinking to be tested

In any well-led organisation, ideas are examined and plans are questioned. This is not adversarial; it is how sound decisions are made.

Leaders become accustomed to presenting a proposal along with its assumptions and trade-offs. They learn to welcome useful challenge and to surface problems early, while they are still manageable. The aim is always better judgement, not personal critique.

5. They pay attention to how conversations are used

Senior people are attentive to the purpose of a meeting or discussion. Is the aim to inform, to decide, to solve, or simply to align?

When that purpose is clear, conversations tend to be shorter and more productive. When it isn’t, they can drift. Good leaders gently keep things on track, note items that need separate attention, and make it easy for others to contribute constructively.

6. They clarify responsibility

Many business frustrations stem from a simple question: who is actually responsible for this?

Effective founders become increasingly explicit about decision rights and ownership, even within very small teams. Once it is clear who is deciding, who is advising and who is executing, momentum increases and ambiguity reduces.

7. They consider risk alongside opportunity

Alongside planning and ambition sits a quieter habit: looking ahead to what might go wrong and how it would be handled.

This is not pessimism; it is preparedness. Thinking through potential obstacles in advance makes them far easier to navigate if they do arise. It also sharpens decision-making in the present.

8. They establish a steady operating rhythm

Most successful businesses run on some form of cadence.

A weekly check on priorities and numbers.

A monthly review of performance and emerging issues.

A quarterly step back to reassess direction and resource allocation.

This rhythm creates a sense that the business is being actively steered, rather than simply responded to as things arise.

9. They document and follow through

Decisions are noted. Actions are assigned. Conversations lead somewhere.

This is less about bureaucracy and more about continuity. Without a written record and clear ownership, even excellent ideas can dissolve into good intentions. With them, progress becomes more reliable and less dependent on memory or mood.

10. They cultivate steadiness

Perhaps the most noticeable quality of experienced leaders is a certain composure.

They learn, over time, not to react immediately to every development but to pause, consider and respond deliberately. There is an embodied steadiness to this - the capacity to regulate one’s own response so that clear judgement can prevail. It allows challenges to be addressed without unnecessary volatility.

Crucially, they separate themselves from the outcome. A plan not working is information, not personal failure.

11. They invest in key relationships

Well-run businesses rarely operate in isolation. They depend on a network of collaborators, suppliers and advocates.

Effective founders invest in these relationships thoughtfully. They communicate early, manage expectations and avoid unnecessary surprises. Trust, once established, makes almost everything else easier.

12. They hold both the present and the future in mind

Finally, executive thinking involves a dual awareness: what requires attention now, and what may matter next.

This might mean addressing an immediate operational issue while also considering longer-term positioning, visibility or market shifts. Over time, this becomes a natural way of thinking - one that keeps a business both grounded and forward-moving.

None of this is particularly dramatic.

But together, these habits mark the difference between simply running a practice and actively leading one

A note on BOARD MEETINGS - monthly C-Suite team updates:

In truth, half of the most important work of the month does NOT take place at a board meeting itself. It takes place beforehand, in the preparation of the report that is shared with board members.

The act of stepping back, gathering your numbers, assessing what is working, identifying constraints and deciding what matters next is where real leadership begins. By the time you present to the group, much of the thinking has already been done. The meeting then becomes what it should be: a place for refinement, perspective and decisive forward movement, not improvisation.

Over time, candidates for board membership find themselves thinking differently about the businesses - more strategically, more calmly, more intentionally. They begin to lead rather than simply react.

If this resonates, you may be ready for Designers’ Boardroom

Understanding C-suite behaviour intellectually is one thing.

Embedding it into how you actually run your business is another entirely.

And for most designers, it does not come naturally at first.

Designers' Boardroom is a programme of 12, monthly peer group meetings. The purpose is to drive business growth through accountability, consistency, and strategy. Let me say this clearly: nobody arrives at Designers’ Boardroom as a perfectly formed executive. If that were the entry requirement, almost nobody would qualify. What matters is not that this way of operating is already second nature to you - only that you feel the pull towards it, and are willing to grow into it over time.

Because that is exactly what Boardroom is for.

Designers’ Boardroom is not a place where everyone else has it all figured out. It is a small, serious, and deeply supportive forum for interior designers who want to run their practices with greater clarity, confidence and commercial intention - and who understand that learning to think and behave like a business leader is a gradual professional evolution.

We are all, in different ways, making the same transition:

from talented practitioner to effective director.

One of the simplest and most powerful tools we'll adopt this year is a repeatable seven-minute board update. Each member learns, over time, to present their business clearly and succinctly:

1. Headline: one sentence on business health this month
2. Scoreboard: three to five key numbers (pipeline, cash, leads, delivery capacity, visibility)
3. Wins: what’s working, and why
4. Constraint: the key bottleneck to solve next
5. Decision / Ask: what input or perspective is needed
6. Risks: what could bite in the near future
7. Next 30 days: three (or so) named priorities

For some, this feels unfamiliar at first. That is entirely normal.

Nobody expects you to arrive fully formed.

Designers’ Boardroom operates in small groups across the year. Each session combines structured updates, thoughtful questioning and steady professional elevation. It is a place to be taken seriously, and to learn - gradually and without pretence - to take your own business seriously too.

If you sense that you are ready to step into a more intentional way of leading your practice, even if you do not yet feel entirely confident doing so, you may find your people here.

I am currently compiling a waiting list for the next Designers’ Boardroom group.

If you would like to be considered, get in touch to add your name.