The Two Conflicting Roles of a CEO

There’s much dis­cus­sion about what makes a great CEO and how much time to spend in the two crit­i­cal parts of their role:

• Strate­gic to grow the busi­ness for the future and
• Oper­a­tional to run the busi­ness well to make sure it achieves tar­gets this week, this month, or this quarter.

CEOs often find it chal­leng­ing, when they are pulled too much in one direc­tion or anoth­er, to prop­er­ly allo­cate their time and ener­gy to those two major roles. And their response to that con­flict deter­mines the long-term results they can achieve.

I’ve seen cas­es where CEOs got so caught up in the strate­gic side that core dis­ci­plines of the busi­ness slipped. And although they cre­at­ed amaz­ing growth for a cou­ple of years, their lack of oper­a­tional rigour result­ed in seri­ous problems.

In the oth­er extreme, I’ve seen CEOs who, with a great skill set for dri­ving oper­a­tional excel­lence and short-term per­for­mance, cre­at­ed a very slow growth rate.

A Struc­ture to Sup­port Growth

Most of the CEOs we work with con­tin­u­al­ly man­age this con­flict to the best of their abil­i­ties. The strat­e­gy that tends to pro­duce the best results is to have high-per­form­ing exec­u­tive and lead­er­ship teams, laser focused on run­ning the busi­ness to make sure they are on track, week­ly, month­ly and quarterly.

To make this hap­pen, many CEOS made changes with key exec­u­tives or the struc­ture of the business.

Some hired a pres­i­dent for the whole com­pa­ny or for dif­fer­ent divisions.

Some mod­i­fied their struc­ture to have few­er direct reports – three or four instead of six or sev­en or eight.

Oth­ers built in dis­ci­plines and sys­tems so that they don’t get involved in day-to-day operations.

Even with these strate­gies in place, it can still be very chal­leng­ing to stay in a strate­gic role, espe­cial­ly when crit­i­cal, oper­a­tional prob­lems come up — like major issues with cus­tomers or employ­ees when they pulled into short-term tac­ti­cal issues.

To make sure they work on the future of the busi­ness, CEOs:

• Gen­er­al­ly ded­i­cate time and space, out­side of the office.
• Do both strate­gic think­ing and set meet­ings with peo­ple who can help the advance­ment of the busi­ness when travelling
• Have on-going strate­gic thought part­ners to work on ideas and projects: a key exec­u­tive, a busi­ness part­ner, a sup­pli­er, board mem­ber, coach or consultant.

One CEO I inter­viewed for the book Scal­ing Up did some of his best think­ing in con­ver­sa­tion with his dog.

A del­i­cate balance

Even with a strong team and struc­ture in place, it takes dis­ci­pline to ensure CEOs don’t get too con­sumed with day-to-day tac­ti­cal issues. With­out con­sis­tent, ded­i­cat­ed time spent on future growth, it sim­ply won’t happen.

The Chal­lenge

• How much of your time should you ide­al­ly be spend­ing as a strate­gic CEO focused on growth — or as an oper­a­tional CEO dri­ving short­er-term performance?

Addi­tion­al Podcasts

• Get the Most from Your Strate­gic Plan­ning Framework
• Four Dis­tinct Types of A‑Players
• How to Retain Your Top Talent

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• Strate­gic Lead­er­ship vs Tac­ti­cal Deci­sion Making
• Build­ing an Endur­ing Business
• Strate­gic Plan­ning: 15 Min­utes, 15 Months, 15 Years
• The Hid­den Cost of Not Hav­ing a Team of A‑Players