How Does Your CEO and Board Help You Achieve Your Vision?

As a CFO, the journey towards realising your company's vision is often complex and multifaceted. One critical aspect of this journey involves the effective structuring of your organisation, particularly the roles and interplay between your CEO and Board.

Today, I'm going to share with you the 3 levers of The Golden Triad™. We'll delve into how the strategic governance of your board, the strategic positioning led by the CEO, and the strategic execution carried out by the C-suite collectively drive your company towards achieving its vision.

Strategic Governance: The Board's Role

At the heart of every successful company lies robust strategic governance, which is primarily the responsibility of the board. Strategic governance encompasses two key elements: defence at the bottom and winning at the top. This duality ensures that the company is not only protected from potential threats but also positioned to seize opportunities for growth.

Defence at the Bottom: The board must ensure that the company is safeguarded against compliance issues and other risks that could potentially undermine its stability and operations. This involves a vigilant approach to regulatory compliance, ethical standards, and risk management practices.

Winning at the Top: On the flip side, the board must also focus on growth and value creation. This involves setting the strategic direction and ensuring that the company is well-positioned to achieve its long-term objectives. The board must ask critical questions such as: What do we need to do to grow the value of the company? How can we position ourselves to win in the market?

Strategic Positioning: The CEO's Role

The CEO plays a pivotal role in taking the board's strategic intentions and translating them into actionable plans. This process involves both internal and external positioning to ensure alignment and relevance.

Internal Positioning (Engagement): Internally, the CEO must create and foster a culture where everyone is on board with the company's vision and strategic goals. This involves effective communication, leadership, and creating a cohesive environment where every employee understands their role in achieving the company's objectives.

External Positioning (Relevance): Externally, the CEO must ensure that the company remains relevant in the market. This involves staying attuned to market trends, customer needs, and competitive dynamics. The CEO's role here is to position the company as a leader in its industry, maintaining strong engagement with stakeholders and ensuring the company's value proposition resonates with the market.

Strategic Execution: The C-Suite's Role

While the board sets the direction and the CEO positions the company, it is the C-suite that executes the strategy. Strategic execution is about turning plans into results, and it revolves around two critical elements: money and capability.

Money: The C-suite is responsible for managing the company's finances, ensuring compliance, and optimising financial performance. This includes financial planning, analysis, risk management, and maintaining financial health. The CFO's role is crucial in this space - identifying what can stop the company from winning at the top financially and what can kill it at the bottom.

Capability: Collectively your executive team must focus on building and managing the company's capabilities, including people, systems, and processes. This is about ensuring that the company has the operational capacity to execute its strategy effectively. They must ensure that the company's capabilities are aligned with its strategic goals and can support sustainable growth.

As I've started to share The Golden Triad™, I've been told the most useful thing is how it provides a powerful, yet simple, perspective on the most critical relationships within an organisation.

They specifically point out, the clarity it provides around how critical the interrelationships are between those 3 parties.

Limitless Opportunity: When you have a Board that is effectively discharging its Strategic Governance duties and they have a relationship of deep trust and collaboration with the CEO, it positions the company in a way where they can operate with the confidence of knowing future opportunities will be abundant and forever forthcoming.

Investor Trust: When your C-suite or executive team deliver on the promise - ie the strategy to win at the top and defend at the bottom set by the Board - the company has the benefit of absolute investor and market trust.

Sustained Growth: At a time when sustainable growth is on every CEO's agenda, the relationship between them and their C-suite is paramount. The CEO must have the support and challenge of their executive team to ensure that the positioning internally and externally by the CEO is matched by what's being delivered.

We believe this is how organisations thrive in today's context. Never before has 'tone at the top' been so important and through The Golden Triad™ we can see the impact of these roles and relations to critical business outcomes.

Which outcome is most important to you right now? How effectively do those parties exemplify those attributes in your organisation? Which lever, if amplified, would deliver the greatest benefit for your organisation right now?

Love to hear your thoughts...