How to use your time advising the CEO wisely

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Over the years, James Lukaszewski has counselled several hundred CEOs on major issues they faced. It’s a unique role, one you might aspire to, if not globally as in his case, then close to home, in your own organization.

“The goal of being a trusted advisor is to be in the room when people decide important things, whether or not it’s your idea that prevails. Becoming a trusted strategic advisor, much like being a CEO, is mostly on-the-job training and experience,” he writes in his preface to Influencing Leaders, a book co-written with crisis management consultant Helio Fred Garcia.

They urge you to keep in mind the loneliness of the CEO. Indeed, one of the roles of a strategic advisor is to mitigate that isolation. The information top bosses normally receive is filtered and sanitized. As they rise through the ranks, surrounded by a “yes sir/yes ma’am” mentality, they might also develop an exaggerated sense of their own abilities. The two advisors observe that “the higher the altitude, the thinner the leader’s skin. Increasing seniority often comes with decreasing tolerance for questions, questioners, those who push back and people with negative approaches.”

CEOs face two major challenges. Their first job is to look into the future, beyond the horizon to what is out there, and tell the organization where it is headed and some of the pitfalls ahead. The second principal task is to find the people power to achieve the organizational mission. Leadership is about tomorrow.

The CEO wants immediate advice from you – not a declaration you find the issue fascinating but complex and plan to research more thoroughly and contemplate possibilities over the next month. You have to be able to give advice on the spot. “At the CEO level, decisions are made and actions are often taken pretty much in real time,” they note.

CEOs also want candour from you, which Mr. Lukaszewski sums up as “truth with an attitude, delivered right now!” You must be super-honest and provide information that matters. A reluctance to be candid is a relationship killer. “Whether it is fear, lack of preparation or simply timidity, lack of candour is the fastest way to become disemployed as a trusted strategic advisor,” they warn. You will also run into trouble if your “truth with an attitude” becomes “truth with arrogance.”

You must be able to interpret for the leader what different aspects of a situation mean and the likely consequence of various choices. They count on you to know what’s important and provide them with related information, given the filtration process otherwise around them.

You must be respectful of their time pressures, not seek to expand face time with the CEO to reaffirm your importance in your own mind or for others. Avoid tangents. “Always talk to time rather than filling time with talk. Find ways to limit what you talk about so that whatever your discussion covers, you are ready to provide information in a format and fashion that is direct, helpful, instructive and trustable,” they write.

Toward that end, they share the three-minute drill, a guide to the time-driven approach for making recommendations. It has six steps, with a 450-word overall limit to ensure brevity:

• Situation/Introduction (60 words): Give a brief description of the nature of the issue, problem or situation. Keep to the facts: Where the organization is and what is known.
• Analysis/Assumptions (60 words): Move on to the significance of the situation, the implications and how it threatens or provides an opportunity for the organization. Include the one or two assumptions you have made in the analysis.
• The Goal (60 words): Offer a clear, concise statement of the task to be accomplished or target to be reached and why. This indicates where the organization should be headed and how the threat faced will be mitigated or the opportunity seized. “Useful goals are understandable, achievable, brief, positive and time/deadline sensitive. And more importantly, the boss will want the payoff previewed early,” they write.
• Options/Outcomes (150 words): Now provide at least three options in response to the situation presented earlier in your analysis. Option one would be to do nothing or nothing out of the ordinary; list with it the foreseeable consequences. Option two is to do something modest, again with the likely consequences. The authors describe option one as a 0-per-cent solution and option two as the 100-per-cent solution. Finally, a 125-per-cent solution should be offered, to do even more than just suggested.
• Recommendation (60 words): Name the choice you would make. Usually this is the option with the least number of unintended negative consequences. Speak to how to operationalize the decision. “This is where you earn your paycheque,” they state. But still be terse.
• Justification (60) words: Address the reaction or circumstances that will result if the recommendation is implemented. Don’t explain your advice by mentioning preference or intuition. Stress it is the best outcome.

Following that approach might improve the way you provide advice to a CEO or senior officials in your next opportunity.

Cannonballs

• Keep Peter Drucker’s advice on group decision-making in mind: “If you have quick consensus on an important matter, don’t make the decision.” Try again later, making sure you have rigorous debate, hearing dissent and other concerns.
• Recruiting specialist John Sullivan notes that asking people to name the best employee they have ever worked with should be a low-tech, low-cost way to find amazing prospects.  
• Singer Dionne Warwick says she never gives advice to the next generation as nobody takes it anyway: “I will encourage and, if I’m asked a question and have an answer, I will give that.” She says youngsters know where they want to go and how they want to get there, and they’re going to follow their own trail. 

Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.