What Silicon Valley Won't Tell You About CEOs
How is wet concrete like a light bulb? It took plunging my foot into wet concrete for me to obtain a vital insight into management.
One day, I was puzzling over the issue of why smart, effective CEOs are often not intellectual, as I walked in Cambridge, Massachusetts – home of the renowned MIT Sloan School of Management. Suddenly, I felt my foot submerge into something sludgy and viscous. I looked down to see that I had sunk my foot into a sidewalk of wet concrete.
I didn’t mind that I’d partially ruined a good pair of shoes, because I’d hit upon a realization:
A great CEO does not need to be an intellectual.
When stated this simply, it’s not surprising. However, many great CEOs – think of Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates, or Elon Musk -- are some of the smartest people in the world. But smart does not necessarily mean intellectual, although conflating the two is common.
Conflating the two is common particularly in well-respected areas of the business world, such as the startup scene in Silicon Valley. Perhaps this is not surprising, as many startup founders in Silicon Valley are Stanford grads, and Stanford is known (or infamous, some might say) for its emphasis on “intellectual vitality.”
Who is an intellectual?
As I define it for this essay, an intellectual is someone who is capable of and interested in exploring ideas for their own sake. An intellectual will explore an idea from multiple angles, usually with some sort of attempt to find a “true” answer, rather than an answer that is simply convenient or that sounds good. People who are intellectual may be searching to answers for real-world problems (such as political policy issues) or theoretical problems, such as a math problem.
Why does this distinction matter?
Simply put, the distinction can help you be more effective at the work you’re doing.
When you understand clearly that there are differences between the skills of a CEO and the skills of an intellectual, you can decide whether you want to be doing CEO-type work or intellectual work at a given moment (even if you’re not a CEO).
In contrast, if you don’t realize that they’re different skills, you may end up falling down interesting intellectual rabbit-holes while deluding yourself that you’re being an effective employee or CEO.
Elite schools, such as Stanford and MIT, promote both intellectual and CEO-abilities. Students can get the idea that “good CEO” and “smart person who thinks deeply about intellectual ideas” are necessarily the same person.
But they’re not. Being a good CEO, and being an intellectual, are two largely distinct skillsets. When you think about it, that’s not surprising. Just as a project manager does not need to be great at actually producing a product, neither does a CEO need to be great at generating intellectual ideas (or rather, being able to explain them) even if that’s what the company is producing.
Different times for different IDEA steps – Ideating, Decision-making, Exploring, and Accomplishing
The following four steps are all necessary to create or grow a business, but when you’re doing one of the following, you’re not doing the others.
Ideating or brainstorming
Decision-making
Exploring new ideas in depth
Accomplishing an initiative or implementing specifics of an agenda
In other words, when you’re doing one of the above activities, you’re NOT doing the other three. When you try to do them all at once, you fail.
One single person does not need to be responsible for all the activities above. In fact, sometimes people are markedly better at one of the above steps than the others.
When you’re ideating/brainstorming the point is to generate a bunch of ideas, without filtering yourself.
When you’re deciding, you need to make a decision.
When you’re exploring new ideas in depth, you may need to block off a significant amount of time for research deep into that idea, and be disciplined to stay on task without instead brainstorming or deciding whether to implement the idea.
When you’re accomplishing your initiatives, you need to focus on how to implement effectively.
Exploring intellectual ideas can hinder effective decisions
Anyone who loves intellectual ideas is familiar with the journey of embarking on a long, theoretical thought-tangent. This can lead to discussions which may be intellectually fulfilling, but are not intended to, and do not usually, lead to a concrete decision.1
So a CEO does not necessarily need to be part of the process in which intellectual ideas are discussed – even if the company’s product is heavily related to intellectual ideas. That’s because production is not the same as decision-making or implementation.
A CEO should be good at making decisions and implementing.2 The CEO need not be an idea generator herself or himself. If a CEO is also good at coming up with ideas, that’s icing on the cake. If the CEO becomes really interested in intellectual rabbit-holes, that may be beneficial in certain situations – but it may actually be distracting in other situations.
Practical suggestion
If you’re working with other people, consider making a clear decision about what kind of meeting you’re having. Are you ideating, deciding, exploring new ideas, or figuring out how to implement?
Or, if you’re working alone, be clear with yourself: Am I trying to ideate, decide, explore, or accomplish?
Summary
Executives don’t necessarily need to be intellectually curious to fulfill the job of a great executive.
People who decide at the outset that they’re either trying to be intellectual or focus on executive ability can help themselves and their team have clarity about goals.
Clarity lets you realize that a CEO doesn’t have to get bogged down in intellectual intricacy. Instead, CEOs must focus on making decisions and implementing in a concrete way – without having to first step in a roadway full of wet concrete.
A similar phenomenon may occur in other arenas, such as religious life. Some people appear quite knowledgeable about their religion’s scriptures or theology, but have much room to grow in the ability of manifesting their religious beliefs through action. For example, someone may be very knowledgeable about the Bible’s teachings on kindness – they may know the Bible in its original languages, and may be able to provide in-depth theological explanations regarding certain words – but may be more unkind than a non-religious person. In part, I suspect this phenomenon is related to the fact that intellectual understanding is a different skill than implementation or practice. Just because you’re good at asking questions, spotting problems, and coming up with explanations doesn’t mean you’re good at getting things done or acting on what you’ve learned.
CEOs must be good at other things, too, of course. What exact skills a CEO must possess depends in part on the size of the company they’re managing. As Aswath Damodaran argues, CEOs may need different skills at different stages of a company’s lifecyle. See for example his presentation on “Managing the Corporate Lifecycle.” https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pdfiles/blog/CEOLifeCycle.pdf