Thinker CEOs – an idea whose time has come

There is a premium on perspectives and that has made necessary the CEO as a thinker. Given that there is so much data, so much infrastructure to appropriately store the growing volumes of diverse data, a vast array of tools & techniques, perhaps it is time that the CEO is not from a data background. Sounds shocking? It is not; it is a sensible advice because what will bring decisive difference to mountains of data is a perspective or set of perspectives that can clarify things and lead to fruitful action.

In a complex environment, you need many reference points, which help make sense of data and help connect the dots. Intuition should come more naturally to such people because, as Einstein says somewhere in his vast work, intuition is prior intellectual history, instead of counter-posing intuition to reason. The CEO of the data age has to be a person of multiple reference points, drawing inspiration from both within and without domain, because analogical thinking is a great vehicle that can bestow clarity, if used well. What we need from a CEO is a piercing insight that will cut through swathes of data and reveal what is held within them.

It is important to recognize that data are domiciled within environments that are themselvs subject to multiple interpretations. Such environments are invariably an uneasy amalgam of geopolitics, competitive strength (or weakness), cunning, cultural underpinnings, societal and demographic changes (if not transformation), policy changes, to mention some of the most visible aspects. The environment is continuously evolving but understanding this is a challenge, because the path is neither linear nor one-way like an arrow. It is not only not linear but vulnerable to setbacks. The point is that historical data might not indicate the possibility or probability of setbacks, which may be induced or otherwise.

Typically, analyses of competitive environments ought to show the possibility or otherwise of setbacks, usually done along with game theory. Such setbacks can happen to an entity or an entire business, when there is (new) competition from without. Recall what happened to cameras. Or what happened to the two most famous brands in mobile phones. Projections based on historical data wouldn’t have shown that the product per se was going to face extinction.

Clearly, discussions on disruptive innovations and an understanding of enabling and competing technologies as well as fundamentally challenging technologies should be staple diet for CEOs. When Google was growing beyond being a search engine, Bill Gates checked the ‘Careers’ section to examine the skills Google was looking for and concluded that it was planning forays into things other than search, though it wasn’t immediately clear what these were likely to be. Gates communicated his observations to his team and set them the task of unravelling this. Microsoft then was an extremely successful company! And continues to be so.

Perhaps, the chief quality of a CEO is to remain in perpetual doubt but without letting it lead to paralysis. Creativity is the ability to free yourself from the current environment, even when it is full of success. Creative and organized as there is no escaping being organized. If anything, a thinker CEO has to be better organized than others. The CEO’s Office will be a mini Think Tank comprised of a small army of brave souls who can think in bounded rationality but with the ability to see cracks in such rationality and the need to go beyond. The corner office should not land up in a corner.

Let me end with the wisdom that can come only from poets. TS Eliot observes in one of his poems, The Hollow Man, that “between the idea and reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow”.

Takeaways

There is a premium on perspective

CEO need not be well-versed in data analyses

Multiple reference points are key to great CEOs