Once upon a time, CEOs were an insulated group of executives extremely difficult to unseat. As soon as they assumed the title of chief executive, they became a protected class of elite corporate citizenry, easily dodging any bullet fired in their direction. Those days have long passed. More than ever, business performance matters.

CEOs must think about performance in order to be successful.

CEO tenures are near all-time lows, and those who now reside in the C-suite have come to realize that the only way to survive the current onslaught from an ever-growing group of vocal constituencies is through consistent improvements in performance. Who you know and what you say are rightfully becoming less important than what you contribute to outcomes produced. One important indicator of success is healthy growth.

NCMM's Blueprint for Growth: Middle Market Growth Champions Reveal a Framework for Success indicates that growth is not always tied to measurable factors such as company size, industry type, ownership structure, or location. This research instead reveals that companies that experience the most growth share common, more abstract qualities with each other. One common trait of midsize companies that achieve growth rates of over 9 percent is a strong focus on innovation. In order for a midsize company to grow and thrive, it must espouse the characteristics and attitudes that lead to innovation.

It's up to the CEO to set the tone. After all, leadership without performance is not really leadership at all. The unavoidable reality is that results matter. Nowhere does this statement mean more than as it relates to the position of chief executive. Real leaders perform, get the job done, and consistently exceed expectations. No results = no leadership.

In my new book, Hacking Leadership, I talk about the importance of chinning to a higher bar. What I mean by this can be best summarized by the following statement: A great leader can accomplish much, but a culture of leadership can accomplish much more. A culture of leadership values excellence, not mediocrity; pursuit, not stasis; and business performance, not apathy. The reality is that great leadership exists to disrupt mediocrity. Job Number 1 for a CEO is to shatter the status quo through innovation, not to defend and protect it.

Here are five things every middle market CEO must do to create a culture of leadership and innovation and to improve business performance:

  1. Culture. Many talk about the importance of culture, but few really understand it well enough to harness its power. Culture is not a construct. It's not a hierarchy, and it's not a competency. Culture is the nexus of an organization's values, vision, strategy, mission, and talent. It's the ethos that underpins what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and who you do it for and with. A healthy, thriving culture is the ultimate competitive advantage. CEOs cannot create sustainable growth without creating a high-trust, high-performance culture. CEOs who merely pay lip service to culture do so at their own peril.

  2. People. Without people, CEOs have no platform to stand on, no teams to build, and no organization to lead. I have witnessed far too many chief executives who treat people as something to leverage rather than recognize people as those who they should be creating leverage for. It's not a CEO's job to put people in boxes but to free them from boxes. There's an old Roman saying: He who controls the army, wins. I prefer a more modern spin: He or she who best serves the army, wins. CEOs who fail to win the hearts and minds of their people will sentence their organization to mediocrity and eventually to irrelevance.

  3. Unlearning. Great CEOs create high-performance cultures by challenging everything, especially institutionalized thinking. Just because you've done something a certain way for a certain length of time doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Great leadership is not lazy - it pursues growth and development. It never takes solace in what it knows - it seeks to understand what it doesn't. Leadership isn't about being right - it's about achieving the right outcome. Smart CEOs do not shun dissenting opinions - they encourage them. If you want a high-performance culture, do not fear being proven wrong. Fear being wrong and not knowing it until it's too late.

  4. Diversity. When I refer to diversity, I'm not talking about diversity mandates but diversity in thought. Smart leaders do not concern themselves with class distinctions, but they care greatly about distinction of contribution. Diversity is at its best when there is alignment around core values and vision but vigorous debate around ideas, logic, philosophy, and positions. A leader's job is not to clone his or herself but to help create a masterpiece much greater than the original.

  5. Complexity. Anyone can create complexity, but few can author the elegance of simplicity. While complexity may create short-term profit opportunities, it's simplifying the complex that allows something to become profitable over the long haul. See how many policies and procedures you can eliminate or simplify. Strive to simplify everything you do, and your organization will find it has achieved an almost unquantifiable gain in performance. Think of complexity as stupidity and simplicity as the ultimate sophistication. Brian Layer summed it up perfectly: "If it's stupid, it's not our policy."

Mike Myatt is an NCMM contributor and widely regarded as America's top CEO coach. He is currently the CEO at N2growth, one of the world's top leadership-development firms. Follow Mike on Twitter.