We use the word frequently. ‘I run a business’. ‘They run businesses all over the place’. We use it so often that we don’t bother to think about it. We don’t notice how quaint it is in 2025. Running a business refers to the old days when a message needed a courier, fleet of foot or on horseback. That’s what running a business was. Not in the age of the internet. You don’t run a WhatsApp, for goodness sake.
Today you must drive a business. A CEO has two main responsibilities:
(i) for the strategy of the business
(ii) for the people who execute that strategy for him or her.
The CEO will have to do other things including some negotiating with the largest customers and a bit of presenting to the media. If these become too important the two primary jobs will be neglected. One of them is nearly always neglected, anyway, by many CEOs – which is why their businesses fail.
Contrary to the observations of some employees, CEOs are human beings. They, like us, itch to do things. Trivialities are the easiest, so they do them. These are the tactics of business. It’s called micromanaging. It is not the CEO’s job. When the CEO does it s/he denies their line managers the reward of achievement, prevents learning to keep up with changing technologies, fails to spot the successors for the CEO’s job and risks killing the business.
Tactics are at the face of the business, day to day, sale by sale. They need highly competent, educated and dedicated people to do them effectively. Finding, teaching, mentoring, coaching, developing and motivating those people is the CEO’s second job. It is critical. Today, when everyone thinks more about their rights than about their responsibilities, it is even harder than in the days of slave labour. They handled whips. We must handle wiles.
A CEO who summons people to attend him sitting on the far side of a Big Barrier (desk) is useless. That’s not how s/he gets people outside the office to do things for them. Non-office achievements demand that you engage. The same is true for office life.
Paul Chambers was Chairman/CEO of ICI Industries in 1960. He told me he glanced at the many documents he received each day and put 95% of them into an ‘out’ tray. “I don’t know what happens to them,” he said, “but if I can see that there is a probable solution, others can do so too. I keep those for which there appears to be no solution. They are my job.”
CEOs must sort out what matters and what doesn’t. People matter.
The CEO’s primary job is to drive the business. Businesses are fast cars today. You need strong control of the road, not of the moving parts. The road is the strategy. Few people have much idea of what a strategy is. AI’s definition of a strategy is “a long-term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal or set of goals”. Its full definition is another 159 words. Dear old AI. Reams of words, obfuscation of meaning.
My definition of strategy is ‘Whither & When?”. It should be item 1 on the agenda of every board meeting. Items 2 onwards should probably be cancelled.
Before anyone appoints you to a senior job write your answer to ’Whither & When?’
Not for their satisfaction.
For your achievement.
Good morning
John Bittleston
When you write to us, even just a line, our brains light up, our adrenaline pumps and we feel the hand of interest stirring our mental cogs into action. [email protected]. Yay.
8 February 2025
