The Expertise Trap for CEOs

The danger of leading an enterprise company like a startup

There are two approaches to the CEO job.

The first approach, and the way most people perform the CEO job, is from a position of expertise. Their mindset is: I am the person who knows the most about everything and am the best person to make all the decisions. In order to make those decisions I need to collect data from all parts of the business and have it available at my fingertips to quickly decide and execute. This is how most startups run, and it is in fact the most effective and efficient way to run small organizations—say, 20 employees or less.

The challenge is that as the organization grows, eventually the CEO becomes overwhelmed with data and people and can no longer direct everything personally. We see many startup founders floundering at this stage as the organization becomes too complex for one person to be the expert in all the areas of the business.

Once a CEO realizes they have reached this stage, they need to shift to the second approach, to leading from a position of strat…