Many responsibilities of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are exclusive. Superior financial and competitive performing businesses understand these responsibilities.

1. There is constant pressure on every CEO to do a little bit of everything. That makes everybody happy but
guarantees that there are no results.
̶ Peter Drucker
The Chief Executive Officer
Chief Executive Officers are either envied or vilified. Many covet the title, few will achieve it. Fewer still
will lead extraordinary companies. Surprisingly, there is little agreement on what a CEO does. Trying to
describe the job of the CEO is daunting and an ideal target for diverging opinions. The prevalence of
mediocre or disappointing business performance suggests that the clear majority of CEOs need help.
Together with a few cups of coffee, my morning routine includes reading “news” articles posted on a
couple of news consolidators. Every day I see articles promising to unveil the hidden secrets of successful
leaders and more specifically, Chief Executive Officers. Each of these articles dutifully mentions the
personal predilections of one or two new-age business CEOs. For the most part these articles are benign
offering not much more than platitudes. Every time I read one of these articles I can’t help but ask the
question, to myself, has this author ever served as a CEO or even known one?
I’m going to avoid discussing the personality traits of a “successful” CEO. I know from experience that its
naive to think there’s a magic “CEO” personality type guarantying success; despite the hype perpetrated
in books and videos. That idea is poppycock. I really don’t care what they eat for breakfast, their exercise
routine, or favorite feng shui advisor. I do however believe understanding a select few CEO-exclusive
requirements is essential. How individual CEOs satisfy those job requirements will differ widely. The
difference is style verses substance.
Let me be clear, I don’t pretend to know the “secrets” of CEO leadership. I’ve served as a CEO multiple
times. I’ve advised CEO’s more times than I can remember. I’ve read a lot about executive leadership.
And I’ve reviewed financial performance of well over 5,000 businesses. Just because I don’t know the
“secrets” doesn’t mean I don’t have a point-of-view. My point-of-view can be summed up pretty-simply.
There is no secret. Leading a superior performing business takes hard work, humiliate, courage, and
confidence. CEO’s are people and like other people each brings their own unique signature to the job.

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My thoughts shouldn’t be followed blindly. Middle-market CEOs don’t need a dogmatic prescription of
“proper” behavior. Nevertheless, middle-market CEOs can benefit from a more penetrating description
of their job responsibilities.
The Chief Executive Officer is the business leader. This job means ensuring others work cooperatively and
cohesively to accomplish shared institutional goals. This only happens when the CEO can clearly see the
gap between what they’re doing and what they should be doing.
Extraordinary businesses provide their customers satisfaction superior to competitors and offer capital
providers better rewards than alternatives. Sound impossible? For most in the middle-market, sadly, the
numbers confirm that it’s pretty rare (only about 10% of middle-market businesses will significantly out
perform their peers).
Most written discussions focus on CEOs of very large companies. For example, in his Harvard Business
Review article, A.G. Lafley provides an excellent discussion but is written from the experienced
perspective of a CEO of one of the largest businesses in the world, Proctor & Gamble. My focus is limited
to the role of the CEO of a maturing middle-market business. It is certainly true that Lafley’s experiences
and Peter Drucker’s observations are valuable and deserve attention. There is however a difference.
Middle-market businesses (revenues between $10 million and $1 billion per year) rarely dominate
markets in the way P&G, General Electric, Microsoft, Google, and a few others do. The middle-market
CEO confronts different challenges than those confronted by the CEO of a Fortune 500 business.
Institutional Behemoths push the boundaries of advancing management science. Middle-market
business need to push the boundaries of applying management science.
Most Institutional Behemoths have mature business infrastructures and greater financial resources. The
clear majority of middle-market businesses (over 98% of the 200,000 middle-market businesses) confront
the need to advance institutional maturity. Mimicking the examples of a few Institutional Behemoth
CEOs neglects the differences in operating environments and available resources.
Maturing, middle-market businesses can rarely match the resources of Institutional Behemoths.
Additionally, middle-market CEOs are typically overwhelmed with urgent matters, perhaps better
managed as a routine. These two obstacles are insurmountable to all but the extraordinary. However,
extraordinary businesses, the ones that have overcome the obstacles of resource limitations and
complexity are rewarded with superior profitability, market dominance, and effective competitive
advantages. Ninety percent of middle-market businesses are not now or will be in the future
extraordinary.
It will be no surprise that many will reject (or ignore) much of my perspective. Doing so is to acknowledge
mediocracy as acceptable. Not to fear, those accepting mediocracy are in good company. A good CEO,
of which there are surprisingly few, requires the courage to reject placebic generalities.

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For the remaining few, I’ll offer a little guidance to the CEO determined to lead an extraordinary business.
I’m going to keep my discussion simple and focus on just two basic responsibilities that are unique to the
CEO and aren’t to be delegated.
Future Facing Decisions (Prospective not Retrospective)
Harmonize the Inside and the Outside
The CEO is positioned at the forefront of business change and is responsible for overall business
performance. CEOs are easy to spot, they’re the ones wearing a bull’s-eye. The CEO who feels compelled
to blame others for disappointing results is not long for that title. This means a CEO has two choices.
Either learn how to be effective or look for a new job.
FUTURE FACING DECISIONS
Leading is about what’s next not what’s been. The CEOs of extraordinary businesses lead by devoting
their attention to the future. Not that the past is unimportant. The past provides lessons that serve as
the foundation for future performance. The past also reveals obstacles to achieving future results. Simply
replicating the past, thinking that what worked previously will work in the future, produces only
disappointment.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that customer satisfaction in the future will be different than
customer satisfaction in the past. Consider the recent prevalence of mobile devices, ride-sharing, or on-
demand services like grocery shopping. The world changes constantly and will continue to do so at an
ever-faster pace. It’s the CEO’s job to ensure that the business remains relevant and prevails. This
requires focusing on the future not the past. Failing to do so will lead you to look for another job.
There are certain future-facing decisions that can only be made by the CEO. The importance of these
decisions warrants special attention. There are four decisions that the CEO can’t delegate.
Establishing business intention. (What the business does, should it do, and for whom.)
Defining meaningful results.
Picking priorities.
Hiring key people and determining what the business needs from them.
Business Intentions
Businesses serve different intentions. Commonly, “Vision” is used as a proxy for “Intention.” A “Vision”
however, is too narrow. Establishing a solid business intention is exclusively the CEO’s responsibility.
Intention needs to be more than simply a vision statement, it includes both what the business does and
why. Obviously, CEOs can’t do this in isolation, though some try. Defining business intentions requires
harmonizing different and frequently competing factors. An Owner’s expectation of increased cash
distributions may conflict with the need to invest to satisfy changing customer expectations. Likewise,

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customer expectations, reflected in market research, don’t necessarily reflect emerging technology
capabilities. It’s the CEO who is responsible for harmonizing expectations.
Extraordinary business performance comes from businesses that deliver what they promise, make
promises to customers that matter, and reliably reward their capital providers. It’s the CEO’s job to ensure
the business has a laser-like focus on what it does and does not do.
It’s easy to say that the business is a leading manufacturer of widgets. Self-anointing the business as a
“Leader” is common but vacuous. What does that mean? Does it mean that it provides customers with
the satisfaction of the lowest price? Or does it mean that the manufacture produces the highest quality?
Maybe what’s meant is the best service or the most reliable product? All-in-all, proclamations of
leadership can be very confusing and not always reliable. Institutional clarity is the CEO’s job.
It’s the CEO’s job to decide what the company does; what’s the customer satisfaction promised. The
resulting business intention guides operating configuration and stakeholder expectations. This is no
academic exercise.
Meaningful Results
Business intentions need to be translated into results. The CEO promises specific results in the form of
execution milestones and financial outcomes. Regardless of how a CEO spins results at the end-of-the-
day results will be measured by financial performance. Either immediate or future cash flows. When
owners are disappointed, the CEO is usually at the top of their list for replacement. This requires the CEO
to do two things: 1) manage expectations; and 2) deliver. Delivering results means satisfying the
expectations promised. It’s the CEO who needs to decide and to express the business’s promises and
ensure stakeholders’ expectations are consistent with the business’s promises. The CEO’s job is to make
sure everyone is on the same page. It is not the CEO’s job to make everyone happy.
Priorities
Somethings are more important than others. It’s up to the CEO to make the decision about relative
importance -- Prioritizing. Middle-market businesses usually have a “To-Do List” that far exceeds available
resources (cash and time). This means someone needs to decide what will and will not be performed.
Only the CEO can make the decision about how to allocate limited resources.
Key People
I used to joke, when I was a CEO, that my responsibilities were two, make coffee in the morning and take
the trash out at night. This joke however, was funny only because I had a first-class executive team that
knew what needed to get done and how to do it. My responsibility, at the time (besides coffee and trash)
was ensuring that we hired the best people.
The CEO is personally responsible for building the executive team. Doing so, requires investing the time
to understand and articulate tangible expectations. It’s not enough to specify the job as for example, the
executive in-charge of global sales. The CEO needs to ensure that the right hire understands (or can help
define) the customer, realistic future sales, and the resources required, to produce those sales.
Additionally, the right candidate has a personality that is compatible with the businesses culture and

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values. It’s unrealistic to think that a CEO can be personally involved with every hiring decision. It is
however imperative that the CEO set the right example. When CEO’s hiring decisions are based only on
hiring cost (providing, at best, second-string players) ignoring superior skills, personality, and cultural
compatibility, that’s the standard everyone else is going to follow.
INSIDE AND OUTSIDE
Inside refers to the activities within the business. Outside refers to those business influences residing
external to the business. An Inside view includes the universe of activities necessary to ensure the
business provides the customer satisfaction and capital provider rewards promised. This Inside view also
includes behavioral traits such as culture and institutional values. Conversely, the Outside view focuses
on the external forces that will influence business performance in the future. Outside can include
economic and social conditions as well as competitors and emerging technologies. There is a never-
ending list of factors that can affect business performance. And it’s the CEO’s job to make decisions with
a reliable understanding of these factors.
Inside
Most businesses I’ve encountered suffer from HCS (Herding Cats Syndrome). Fortunately, there’s an HCS
cure -- Clarity of Purpose. Any business having employees, which all middle-market businesses have,
depend on people performing their jobs consistent with the business’s strategic objectives and
institutional values. The business depends on everyone doing their jobs correctly and effectively.
Doing so requires leadership. And that’s the CEO’s job -- to lead. Leadership attributes and skills are
discussed by many but ultimately left to the CEO to decide what to adopt. Despite the abundance of
opinions on business leadership, I’ll suggest CEOs use two objectives to guide their Inside responsibilities:
1) clarity of purpose; and 2) ensuring availability of necessary resources.
There’s no escaping that everyone has a point-of-view or an opinion. Moreover, everyone has individual
self-interests. The CEO harmonizes competing personal opinions and perceptions while simultaneously
channeling the collective energy of many to produce business outcomes.
It helps to starts by addressing the uncertainty and ambiguity encountered when blithely assuming
everyone understands goals in a consistent way. If you’re tempted to assume this is trivial, try this simple
experiment (I’ve used this often and the results are pretty consistent). Ask three or four people, it doesn’t
take very many, to describe their understanding of the business’s value proposition and their
understanding of their contribution. My guess, most, if not all, will reply with an answer that is almost
correct but different than your understanding. It’s kind of silly to expect that people will deliver what’s
expected if their idea of the purpose or goal is different than yours. Employees (executives, managers, or
worker-bees) all make countless little choices every day to satisfy “their” understanding of their job
responsibilities. It’s the CEO responsibility to ensure that everyone’s understanding is consistent with the
goals and objectives established for the business. Otherwise, you’ll end up with something more
comparable to a house full of cats -- all doing their own thing.

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Outside
There’s a big world residing outside the business’s front door. It’s up to the CEO to figure out the relevant
“Outside” and what information about the outside is germane. This idea of the Outside is often confusing
and easily overlooked. My discussion is brief and admittedly barely scratches the surface. My goal is
modest, to raise the issue and encourage thinking.
The “Outside” (a concept I’m borrowing from Peter Drucker) are the important external factors that
influence business performance. The most common factor would be economic conditions. In my
experience however, economic conditions are used more often as an excuse for poor performance than
it is as a target of proactive action. But I’ll leave for another day a more detailed discussion of economic
conditions.
So, who is the Outside? The list is endless. It’s the CEO’s job to decide what’s relevant. I’ll offer a few
suggestions: customers, competitors, alternatives, influencers, and decision makers. Competitors offer
products (or services) that may be perceived by customers as interchangeable. The CEO shouldn’t be
misled to think that just because the business thinks its offerings are unique or better doesn’t mean
customers think so. Thus, a relevant Outsider would be any business offering something a customer may
perceive as interchangeable. Differentiation, what makes a customer perceive a difference, is a matter of
strategy. Customers usually have a choice, they can buy your product, someone else’s similar product, or
do nothing. Customers can also satisfy their expectations with something entirely different. Imagine for
a moment that your business is a movie theater. Your “customer” expecting to be entertained, may
decide to forego a movie in favor of a restaurant. The restaurant isn’t really a direct competitor it is
however a very real customer alternative.
Many customer decisions to buy is predicated on the opinions of others -- influencers. Influencers may
be more informal, typical with many consumer purchases or very formal, typically encountered with
commercial customers. And buyers are not always decision-makers. Selling a building to a business may
require convincing the real estate person on its merits but the CEO or CFO will decide to spend the money.
On the consumer side, I may be responsible for making dinner reservations but my hypothetical wife (I’m
presently single) is probably going to make the decision.
It’s the CEO’s job to define the relevant Outside and what information about the Outside is required and
how it’s to be used. For example, the CEO may decide that competitor intelligence is critically important.
But that starting point will lead to identifying what specific intelligence is necessary. Product offerings
and comparisons are obvious. Additional relevant information may include the competitor’s size, financial
condition, investors, and suppliers. And of course, a natural extension is the intelligence necessary to
determine what the competitor’s customers perceive as the value that they’re buying.
Harmonizing the Inside and the Outside
There is one critical (frequently neglected) CEO responsibility that can’t be delegated. The CEO is the only
person within a business required to harmonize an Inside and Outside focus. Extraordinary businesses
use the intelligence coming from both the Inside and the Outside to produce customer satisfaction and
capital provider rewards. These businesses do so by adapting operating practices and attention to

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relevant Outside intelligence. As maturity advances the CEO of extraordinary businesses replace
monitoring with influencing the Outside.
THE CEO AND ADVISORS
There’s a popular cliché describing the CEO’s job as the loneliest job on the planet. It’s a cliché because
it’s true. The CEO probably spends better-part of everyday consulting with all different kinds of people.
But all that information, provided by others, is unavoidably tainted with self-interest. Sometimes self-
interest is obvious other times it’s hidden. The CEO needs to make decisions that best serve the business
not individuals (including their own). Not easy when everyone has a personal agenda.
Complicating the CEO’s job is the need to navigate uncertainty. Everyone looks to the CEO for decisions
despite uncertainty. The CEO needs to make decisions in an environment that doesn’t accommodate
complete or perfect information. This sounds like an impossible situation. But it doesn’t need to be.
Advisors, whether board members, senior consultants, or qualified friends can offer a CEO with a
perspective not available from employees.
Advising a CEO is different than providing consulting services. CEOs deal with issues that are often difficult
to define or arise unexpectedly. Conventional consulting focuses on performing a specific scope of work,
this is different than helping a CEO navigate the unfamiliar or resolving important choices. Meaningful
perspective and objectivity allows a CEO to separate self-interest from institutional interest and to
broaden their access to the experience of others. The CEO’s job is to combine experience, knowledge,
and good judgement to make choices that affect the business. Top performing CEOs take this
responsibility serious and recognize that their job is to apply wisdom not perpetrate an image of
infallibility. The best CEO’s use outside advisors; either senior consultants, board members, coaches, or
qualified friends. What they don’t do is pretend that they can do the job alone.
Trusted advisors can be indispensable in helping a CEO navigate the uncertainty surrounding imperfect
information. A good advisor, using good questions, can narrow the consequences of imperfect
information by identifying what’s meaningful and what’s not.
Perhaps the most precious asset a CEO can acquire are a few trusted advisors. These are the folks a CEO
can talk to about business issues that are capable of providing a sober and unvarnished perspective. I’ve
encountered two different CEO approaches: “Lone Cowboy” or “Maestro”. The Lone Cowboy seeks no
help and heeds no one’s advice. The Maestro uses the talents of others to produce good outcomes. I’ve
tried both approaches and recommend the later.

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The Author
Andy Harvey is the Managing Partner of Fisher Cut Bait a boutique management consulting firm.
He specializes in working with the senior executives of middle-market businesses. His book, The
Business Odyssey, The Journey a Business Takes to Grow-Up, is scheduled to be published the
summer of 2017.
Andrew C. Harvey
Managing Partner
(213) 703-6662
aharvey@fishercutbait.com
The Firm
Fisher Cut Bait is a management consulting firm guiding select middle-market executives. We
navigate the unfamiliar and the uncertain to make the smart business choices necessary to
produce superior performance.
www.fishercutbait.com