The Vision

The Real Challenge of the CEO

Unravel how a CEO should see the world to achieve his goals.
May 27, 2013.

The Vision
Greet colleagues at work, quickly open the emails ... phone rings, your assistant reports that one of the Vice Presidents need to speak with you urgently, because there is a discrepancy in the final audit report with respect to the expected performance and maturity of critical business processes. The call requires the utmost attention, and before you can proceed, you see a high priority e-mail coming from the COO. There was a serious failure in providing a service that supports critical business processes, and you need to make a decision as to immediately drive a new supplier emergently, and next steps as soon customers will be complaining in an unmanageable scale and the consumer care team will not flow to the calls properly. You must be prepared to engage the public relations department to deal with the media, if the worst-case scenario materializes. Then, on the screen of the notebook appears a notification: "Closing the fiscal year, meeting with the Board," and you know that not all executives finished the reports to submit, and you still have to examine them before the meeting. Where to run? They are all waiting for your decision! Making a decision requires seeing the whole, even superficially, to create the notion of priority and criticality of each aspects that constitute the organization. Knowing very well the core of the business operation is not enough for an assertive decision-making, as well as understand the numbers and relate well to your peers. To deal with all the variables that constitute the daily decisions of a CEO, you need to understand where the real content that moves everything around you lies.

The Challenge
The CFO points to the lower profit margin than expected for the quarter. The CIO demonstrates problems in operation and critical projects that require greater investment. The CCO shows significant disparity between the company's presence in the market and the competitors. Each executive certainly has enough knowledge to identify priority issues in their area, and by separately analyzing each area of knowledge, certainly there are many experts in the market able to define the best direction.

THE REAL CHALLENGE OF THE CEO | TULIO TAKEMAE

Connecting the Dots

Make decisions based on knowledge areas in isolation does not bring the expected and necessary result to drive the company to the next level in the market, because alone, no area of knowledge makes sense. The importance of each knowledge area is directly related to the need of the current context, in other words, all are subject to be under the spotlight at some point, none is truly more important than another. Often the CEO does not have enough time to identify all the variables included in a decision to feel comfortable enough with it. The challenge of the CEO is to identify the impact each decision will result in the whole, based on the information that his peers provide, and in a timely manner.

Connecting the Dots

To discern with greater assertiveness the possible impacts of each decision, compared with the time available, the CEO needs to have a different view from that of his peers, which allows to see the connection between the dots, it is in this vision where the real sense of the whole lies. We need to look beyond each knowledge area, see how every action in these areas positively or negatively affect the others. A decision on an investment in an IT project cannot be summarized only to the peculiarities of this knowledge area, it must pierce the other areas of the company to show the real benefit of the action. This is the true value, the meaning for each knowledge area involved in the decision making process of a company. From the moment when the CEO comes to see as the peculiarities of each area and actions affect others, internally and externally, there is the real decision. This does not apply to areas within the company, but the whole formed by them. This is the decision. In an analogy, it is the difference between a surgeon who observes the functioning of the organs of the patient anesthetized ahead and decide which organ should be saved, and another surgeon who sees how the functioning of each organ affects the others and identify what action will be more beneficial to the whole. I prefer to be in the hands of the second surgeon. The consistency and the source of information used for decision-making is also a crucial factor. The way each executive communicates with his peers is determining factor in how the information will reach the CEO. Seeing the relationship between knowledge areas and not caring communication has the same effect on the company that the interference in communication between neurons. The body, or in the case, the company, does not work as it should and may die.

Reaching the Top

For the CEO to drive the company to the top, he have to plan with assertiveness and perseverance how each action will be performed based on the possible positive or negative impact the whole. For this, we need to see clearly what constitute the whole, and only then identify the connections between everything.

THE REAL CHALLENGE OF THE CEO | TULIO TAKEMAE

Reaching the Top

This task is not trivial and requires discipline. For this reason, the CEO uses his peers, professional advisers, and consultants. However, this is useless if the CEO does not know in detail what he needs from each of these professionals. Rest assured that the best effort is being invested in the right direction begins to be formed in the CEO and goes through all levels of the company. The CEO must first understand that there is no way walk this path alone, and he must have perseverance and humility necessary to create consistent and lasting bonds with their peers so that they will help build insight into the connections between actions of each knowledge area that constitutes the company. For the company to reach the top over the decades, is crucial and a priority of CEO base all decisions on the connections, which functions as an "invisible glue" that binds the parts of the "body" which is the company. From the moment in which the CEO shall base his decisions on these connections, the whole forming the company starts to make sense, and naturally, all the actions start pointing to the same direction and synchronize their efforts in a constructive and synergistic manner.

AUTHOR

Tulio Takemae
Tulio Takemae is President of VIS DVCTVS and through his research discovered the key to Business Excellence. Through this key, he help Executives Leaders and Entrepreneurs from all over the world as Business Adviser to conduct their businesses to the Next Level.

CONTACT
Keep in touch: http://about.me/tuliotakemae Meet my work: http://visdvctvs.com Follow my career: http://conselheiroexecutivo.blogspot.com Read my articles: http://visdvctvs.com/en/articles.html

THE REAL CHALLENGE OF THE CEO | TULIO TAKEMAE