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Bad decisions, taken alone: What CEOs don't do (much)

Updated: Oct 27, 2022


  • Published on October 4, 2022



Office of U.S. Ambassador to U.K., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Guarente + Company Ltd. Imagine, as a CEO (or as an advisor to one), you settled on making a major strategic change without telling your exco, your board, or your investors. From a comms perspective, and heaven knows there have been many, the cardinal sin in the manifest disasters of the first few days of the new Truss administration is also a simple one: ignoring stakeholders.

The two reasons that things go wrong with leaders from an advisory point of view is that they either get good advice, but don't take it; or they get bad advice, and take it. People I work with, and indeed friends who know what I do for a living, often ask me when things like this make the headlines: 'What would you have advised?'.

In the case of politicians, I often just hold my hands up: for the most part, not just beyond help, but beyond wanting help. When it comes to leaders in business, they've normally go to where they are not through anomalies of history or clinging to a greasy pole longer than the next person, but because on the whole they are adept, fast-learning, effective and - with a small p - politically astute.

To go back to my first question - imagine that you and your BFWIL (best friend while it lasts) are making up strategy on the fly, ignoring warnings (it was from former chancellor Rishi Sunak, so he would actually know), listening selectively to the wonks (you can always find at least one economist/advisor who agrees with you), and deciding - wrongly - that there is in fact a very broad and defensible line between bravery and foolishness.

The stakeholders revolt. Exco members brief the press behind your back - ex colleagues openly. Your top 200 start to smell blood. The investors decide the risk premium needs a major adjustment. And your customers start to turn on you too.

So you make some more policy on the fly. And you blame the CFO - it was his idea. Now, for everyone who thinks the corporate world is a stitch-up and that these kinds of things happen every day (probably no-one reading this article, in reality), regrettably the odd exception does happen and corporate collapse is never far behind.

But governance means they don't happen often.

From my view as an advisor to large businesses and the people who run them, it's a narrow and false distinction to talk about 'messages' that 'work for the press'. If what you say direct to any one group of people who are important to your organisation - colleagues, suppliers, regulators, customers, investors and so on - is different to what you'd say to another; or if what you'd say to 'the press'; then you've not properly thought through your strategy and how it will be received.

Guarente & Company Ltd. helps organisations and their leaders prepare for important communications - including 'Stakeholder 360º' sessions to consider the impact opf stakeholders on every audience group. GuarenteCo.com

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