Recently, someone asked me to comment on a situation in a company where the CEO, who is also the founder and principal business development resource, wants to move from day-to-day focus to a leadership role, planning for the future. My off-the-cuff comment was:
“Given the phrasing of your question, this may be easier to say than to do. The situation is cloudy.
If he is the CEO, he is already in a leadership position, but apparently has not been fulfilling some major requirements of that role. It seems obvious that he has not seen that planning for the future is at least as important for him to do as immersing himself in the minutiae of day-to-day activities. At this point, he is surely in for some really heavy lifting.
That he is still the principal business development resource doesn’t speak well of his actual intent or his organizational abilities. Changing the focus of his thinking from the operational to the strategic will take an enormous effort on his part. Given his probable history, whether he can make the required transition is problematic.
I am assuming, from your depiction, that this is probably not a sole proprietorship and that it is a small incorporated company where the CEO has been wearing all the hats from Day One. Most likely, he has not been planning for his succession or his exit from the business, for if he had, he would already have set a training program in motion, have delegated appropriately and wouldn't be in the present situation.
As the situation now stands, it appears that he wants to stay as CEO, but wants to change his job content. Accomplishing this kind of change will require an almost wholesale change in the corporate culture that has developed around him as a result of his exclusive hold on business development. He will need to re-engineer the business to make it happen. I am willing to make a small wager that he will not be able to do it on his own.”
What do you think?
If he is the CEO, he is already in a leadership position, but apparently has not been fulfilling some major requirements of that role. It seems obvious that he has not seen that planning for the future is at least as important for him to do as immersing himself in the minutiae of day-to-day activities. At this point, he is surely in for some really heavy lifting.
That he is still the principal business development resource doesn’t speak well of his actual intent or his organizational abilities. Changing the focus of his thinking from the operational to the strategic will take an enormous effort on his part. Given his probable history, whether he can make the required transition is problematic.
I am assuming, from your depiction, that this is probably not a sole proprietorship and that it is a small incorporated company where the CEO has been wearing all the hats from Day One. Most likely, he has not been planning for his succession or his exit from the business, for if he had, he would already have set a training program in motion, have delegated appropriately and wouldn't be in the present situation.
As the situation now stands, it appears that he wants to stay as CEO, but wants to change his job content. Accomplishing this kind of change will require an almost wholesale change in the corporate culture that has developed around him as a result of his exclusive hold on business development. He will need to re-engineer the business to make it happen. I am willing to make a small wager that he will not be able to do it on his own.”
What do you think?
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