The CEO's Hidden Advantage: Why Prediction Beats Credentials

As CEO, you don’t need to be an expert in every functional area. But you must become expert at identifying expertise in others.

One of the biggest challenges you face as CEO is trying to manage and lead people who have far more expertise in their functional area than you do.

Say your CFO is presenting Q4 financial projections to the board. He’s confident, articulate, and fluent in the language of EBITDA, working capital optimization, and capital allocation frameworks. The board members nod approvingly. You nod too. But as you watch the presentation unfold, an uncomfortable question nags at you: Is this excellent financial planning, or just a bunch of well-packaged bovine excrement?

This is the CEO’s expertise problem, and it’s more common than most leaders want to admit. You probably rose through the ranks by building expertise in one functional area, perhaps sales, finance, or technology. But now you’re responsible for evaluating experts across all the functional areas. You might be a former VP of Sales who can dissect a pipeline forecast in your sleep, but you’re now making decisions about cloud infrastructur…