The title might be chief executive officer, but executing is actually the least important task other senior leaders expect from their CEO, according to a blog post from Harvard Business Review.
Successful CEOs are typically busy with the following six distinct tasks, according to the report.
1. Visioning. CEOs frame their organization's business challenges.
2. Planning. They generate potential solutions to the problems at hand.
3. Deciding. CEOs make commitments to courses of action.
4. Explaining. They communicate the rationale that led them to make a commitment, and they present the legitimate expectations stakeholders can hold about the results that will be produced.
5. Executing. CEOs devote their energy to the execution of their decisions until results are realized and rewards are distributed.
6. Evaluating. They evaluate both the process followed in generating a vision, along with the outcomes obtained and the rewards shared. They search for errors that may have occurred and for adaptations to be made so errors won't be repeated in the future.
Here's the catch: few executives are good at all of these tasks, according to the report. The key to identifying a need for improvement is by asking senior executives, "What is your biggest improvement wish concerning your boss and the chiefs on your team?"
The activity least likely to come up in executives' responses is executing. Rather, the large majority of answers, up to 80 percent, typically involved the first four steps. The biggest sources of frustration business executives have with their teams lies in tasks three and four, according to the report.
"These questions to followers reveal what business executives want from their CEOs and their senior executives: make clear decisions and communicate them to us, with their rationale and implications," according to the report. "Trust us, support us, and leave execution to us."
The report said language used to describe the CEO role is problematic: "It anchors executive action (and mindset) precisely where the challenge does not lie!" Instead, chief decision officer or chief evaluation officer might be a more accurate title, according to the report.
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