CEO Pain #1: (Lack of) Visibility
The First of Three CEO Pains: Opacity
Let’s dive right in.
We once worked with a large financial institution that was great at strategy.
They had detailed corporate strategy documents. Hundreds of pages.
KPI’s, dozens of metrics… the works!
The company had many types of strategy sessions.
Shareholder strategy sessions, board strategy sessions, executive team strategy sessions, strategic reviews, strategic plans. You get the idea.
Over time, constant engagement led to ever increasing strategic scope for the organization, more and more additions for the top team to handle (somewhat reminiscent of Monty Python’s classic Life of Brian skit What Did The Romans Ever Do For Us, for those that have seen it…).
However, if you asked any of the executives to articulate the strategy beyond high-level catch-phrases, you often got more confused looks and varied answers than the number of people involved.
It’s important to note that the strategy was driven by very smart people, doing sophisticated analyses, and developing what can only be called “grand strategy”.
Over the years, the problem expressed itself two-fold.
One, the organization was always seemingly “doing” dozens of things.
Translating organizational purpose into strategy involved lofty vision, mission, goals, values, which are all well and good, but… this “death by strategy” was impossible to take out of the realm of theory, even by a well-meaning and capable team.
In addition to being too much, always adding more “features”, the strategy did not clarify how to get to the destination in granular, tactical, and practical terms.
Two, the organization became paralyzed in its enthusiasm, doing very little in the chaos of endless additive strategy.
There was a huge load to carry, and with lack of clarity on how the destination would be reached, great people churned out, burnt out, exhausted, and demotivated.
This is an example that is symptomatic of the first CEO pain.
But let’s step back a moment.
Over the next few weeks we’re going to discuss the “Three Pains” of CEO in further detail, as first mentioned in ‘A CEO’s Journey’ previously; these pains points are experienced as very specific frustrations and fears, and have addressable solutions.
The three pains are shown in the image above; in this article we’re focusing on #1 here.
The first CEO Pain focuses on visibility.
This shows up in the short-term as frustration with fogginess or “opacity” of direction.
Longer-term the team risks being “taken by surprise”.
How does this show up in practice?
A lack of strategic visibility and direction can manifest in a variety of ways.
It could be a team with no strategy, but this is rare these days.
It can lead to poorly formed, incoherent strategy, that is often a matter of adding random, sometimes competing, objectives together that do not leverage the organization’s advantages.
Or it can lead to over-cooked strategy, that throws in everything “except the kitchen-sink”, in fancy strategies that are not executable.
This organizational myopia can lead to missed opportunities, overlooked threats, and ultimately, the fear of being taken by surprise in a rapidly changing market landscape.
But the solution can begin with recognizing the problem.
The key lies in simplifying complexity, grounding strategies in data and value drivers, and ensuring consistent alignment and communication throughout the organization.
Particularly important is understanding what advantage this particular team has in the context of shifting customer needs and organizational strengths.
We will come back to this in subsequent discussions, but let’s come back to the three pain points, of which we’ve only addressed the first one.
At a fundamental level, the next CEO pain then comes into play, which is:
Second, productivity.
This shows up in the short-term as frustrations with being “stuck” in terms of outputs.
Longer-term the team risks being “left in the dust”.
We will dig into this pain in the coming article.
Thanks,
The Impactful Executive Team
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