In my experience, CEOs spend a lot of time thinking about where their companies need to go. They refine strategies, align their leadership teams, debate priorities with their boards, and set increasingly ambitious goals. As important as all that is, it may not be the hardest part of the job.
A new Bain & Company survey of 100 CEOs reveals a striking divide. Eighty-three percent say their investments and strategic decisions focus on the future and what matters most. And 87% say their executive leadership team aligns around that ambition. Yet only 46% believe they have the right people in the right roles to deliver their ambition.
The ambition gap is small. The execution gap is large.
Strategy is about making things happen. If an organization cannot execute, if it consistently struggles to translate its ambitions into results, it has a strategy problem.
Working with CEOs and leadership teams over the years, I've seen plenty of organizations with compelling strategies struggle to make them real. The problem is rarely, if ever, a lack of effort or intention. It is that the organization isn't properly set up to execute.
The new research from my colleagues identifies four places where execution tends to break down: routines, capabilities, behaviors, and governance.
Routines translate strategy into what people actually do every day. Capabilities put the right skills in the right places. Behaviors determine whether people take ownership, remain curious, and take intelligent risks. Governance determines whether decisions happen quickly and at the right level—or slowly work their way up the hierarchy.
I've written before about the importance of leadership teams behaving as a collective (see "A Study Of Thousands Of Executive Teams Reveals 5 Central Behaviors"). The strongest teams establish clear direction, make and execute decisions consistently, collaborate, adapt, and sustain their energy over time. Those behaviors matter even more when the challenge shifts from agreeing on the strategy to truly delivering it.
That was the experience of a global industrial company. With a strategic priority of realigning costs to match an increasingly competitive market, leaders repeatedly reduced costs only to watch them creep back up. Eventually, they recognized that setting targets was not enough. The C-suite spent hours identifying the behaviors its members needed to change to shift the organization's routines and mindset and build a culture that would make those gains stick.
Execution is a system, not a slogan. CEOs need to ask whether the routines, people, behaviors, and decision processes they have in place reinforce the strategy or quietly work against it.
Here's where the issue gets more personal.
CEOs in the survey say they want to spend more time externally, with customers, peers, advisers, and thought leaders. The time they do spend internally they wish to devote to strategy and transformation.
Their calendars say otherwise.
On average, CEOs currently spend 64% of their time internally, when the right balance would be closer to half. Only 41% say their calendars protect time for deep work on their highest-value priorities. The same percentage maintain an evergreen stop list to prune low-value initiatives.
These findings should prompt some uncomfortable questions:
If too many decisions make their way to the CEO, is the organization responsive enough to customers and the front line?
If routine operating issues dominate the calendar, how much manager and staff time is being spent across the company preparing for those meetings?
And if CEOs say they want a faster, more accountable organization while remaining the final stop for decisions, what behavior are they really modeling?
Data is abundant; real insight and focus are scarce. Adding another priority is easy. Deciding what no longer deserves your attention is much harder.
Closing the execution gap is ultimately about more than productivity or time management. The CEO's job isn't simply to set an ambitious agenda. It is to create the conditions that allow thousands of other people to deliver it: putting the right team in place, simplifying how work gets done, staying close to customers and the front line, and modeling the behaviors the organization needs.
It also requires sustaining yourself for the task. Only 54% of surveyed CEOs say they have routines that sustain their own performance over time—things like energy management, prioritization, and a trusted network of support.
A few years ago, the CEO of a global company taught me a valuable lesson. He had given the keynote speech at a management conference. Afterward, he received lots of unprompted positive feedback about the energy with which he jumped up on stage, much more than he received on the actual content of the speech. At first, he was dismayed. After all, he had put a lot of thought and time into the words of that presentation! But he eventually realized that, while it was appreciated, it was not remembered. His own vigor, determination, and energy played a huge role in how the organization mobilized for its transformation.
"You've got to keep up your personal energy and balance," he told me. "People key off of that more than you think."
Years from now, few people will remember a strategy presentation. They will remember what changed: the businesses built, the customers better served, the leaders developed, and the organization left behind. Setting the ambition is essential. But a CEO's legacy ultimately rests on building an organization and a leadership team capable of making it happen.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com