The Aperture for Modern CEOs

Introduction

The Paradox

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) role is often the ultimate goal of ambitious business leaders. However, leadership is not an ideology … it is a reality! And the reality is that, as organizations and their environments have become increasingly disrupted and complex, leadership, as a practice, has lost its way. Leadership may have lost its way for several reasons—I call out four.

First, since the 1990s, the median tenure of CEOs has dramatically shortened from 10 to 5 years, and consequently, it has become challenging for a CEO to advocate, motivate, and embed their strategic direction in this reduced time frame.

Second, CEOs driven by a multitude of pressures will focus on one or two components of organizational life ...