New CEO Don’t Usually Struggle With Ideas. They Struggle With Control
New CEO Don’t Usually Struggle With Ideas. They Struggle With Control.
McKinsey & Company’s work on CEO transitions points to a pattern investors should care about. Early stumbles rarely come from a lack of vision. They come from how a new CEO handles authority when the job suddenly expands.
A lot of first-year CEOs try to prove they’re in control by staying close to everything. In practice, that slows the organization down.
The ones who settle in faster tend to do three things early:
➤ They get explicit about who has the call on what
➤ They push real authority down sooner than feels comfortable
➤ They eliminate ambiguity before it becomes the norm or part of the culture
There’s a paradox in the role: the job keeps getting bigger, but effective span of control gets narrower.
For investors, this is where volatility often begins. You’ll see it in how decisions move through the company long before a new strategy is fully rolled out.
What’s the earliest behavior you watch for that tells you a first-year CEO understands the role they’ve stepped into?
🔗 Source: The Art of 21st-Century Leadership
