Most CEOs Don't Know WHAT to Do
Every person doing meaningful work needs to understand three things: what to do, why it needs to be done, and how to do it.
Most leadership development focuses on the “how” question. And for good reason: for most leaders, including executives, the “what” of the job is relatively clear. A sales VP knows the objective is to close more deals. A CFO knows the goal is to strengthen the balance sheet. A head of product knows she needs to ship features customers will pay for.
The hard part of these jobs is figuring out how to get there. How do we improve our close rate? How do we reduce our cash burn? How do we prioritize the roadmap?
The CEO Job Is Figuring Out What to Do
But the CEO role is fundamentally different, and most people don’t realize it until they’re sitting in the chair. When you become a CEO, the “how” problems are still there, but you’ve got a bigger fish to fry first: “what” to do in the first place.
This might seem like an absurd thing to say, since CEOs have infinite things to…
