A CEO's biggest threat

17 years ago, Fortune Magazine posted an article entitled “Why CEOs fail.” Less than a decade after newer strategy management frameworks started balancing management focus away from primarily financials, it cast a clear light on the issue that many leaders still underestimate: the inability to execute strategy and change efforts costs more CEOs their job than anything else.

Almost 2 decades later, the issue is as prevalent as it was in 1999. Incredibly, approximately 70% of CEO failures continue to occur not because of their inability to conceptualize winning strategies, but rather their inability to execute them. So who is on your senior team that leads this? 

Being great at sustaining your operations in each functional discipline does not make you strategically agile, it makes you great at sustaining TODAY’S business model, which is in the process of becoming less relevant as you read this. It’s absolutely critical, but it won’t protect you tomorrow. Now more than ever, disruptive business models are coming out of seemingly nowhere, enabled and fueled by technology that leaders don’t see coming. Strategy is about correctly conceptualizing TOMORROW’S business model and competitive advantage, and then realigning every part of your organization to deliver that better than anyone else. 

This brings us to the issue of strategic agility. Being agile in your approach means not only being able to get it done, but also doing so faster than organizations that want to take your market share away. What many leaders fail to recognize is that leading this is a discipline unto itself. 

Are you agile today? 

  • Does your environmental analysis model allow you to see changes without them catching you off-guard?
  • Are your decision-making processes quick, but result in deeply considered choices?
  • Can your operations be quickly aligned to a change in strategy without significant disengagement from employees?
  • Does your management know how to manage change by using employee reflex resistance to make the project more likely to succeed?
  • What artifacts exist that you have the ability to do so? Is it a belief or a demonstrable competency? 

Ultimately and obviously, strategic agility and execution isn’t about protecting just one person’s job. It’s about recognizing the reality that you don’t operate in a vacuum. Your competitors are getting faster, they may start coming from outside your industry, and you don’t have time to waste. It’s about taking back the 6-month lead that you’re currently giving to your biggest threat by not being able to change as fast as you need to. 

What would being much better at this do for your future?

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About the Author 

Kirk Leverington is an 18-year veteran of the Saskatchewan credit union system and a long-term corporate strategy manager. Combining a belief in challenging leaders to think strategically with an expert understanding of systematic approaches to implementation, Kirk has played an integral role over the years in supporting organizational change.

As the manager at SaskCentral of National Consulting, Kirk uses his experience to guide the business team in offering enterprise risk management, deposit and lending support, ICAAP, capital planning, strategic and operational planning, audit, and electronic forms to Canadian credit unions.

A version of this blog was first published here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ceos-biggest-threat-kirk-j-leverington-mba-cmc?trk=prof-post

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