I’M A CEO As a CEO, where is my leverage and how involved do I need to be? Your roles are critical, but limited. In general, your most intense focus will be in the beginning, Act I of the heroic journey. This is because beginnings matter – a lot. The model will give you a map of what to expect as well as what to do. It is a model that can provide common ground for you, for senior management, for middle management and for the natural leaders that you involve. It is an elegant model for delegation and coordination of specific leadership roles and strategies. There are six leadership roles (Visionary, Architect, Catalyst, Guide, Builder and Integrator) and two are critical for CEOs. Two Critical Leadership Roles “Combining the direction of the Visionary and the structure of the Architect provides the foundation on which others throughout the organization can come together to take on their leadership roles” The most critical leadership role is the Visionary, with its strategies of: 1. Establishing the reason for the journey of change and the business case; 2. Creating the vision of the desired state to be attained and its likely impact on stakeholders; 3. Committing leadership to the way the journey will be led. Played well, the Visionary role sets up all the other roles for success. Played poorly, all the other roles have to compensate and that’s a tough slope. The other role that is almost always of critical importance for a CEO is that of the Architect. This role provides the structural elements of: 1. The organizational design required by the vision; 2. The plan(s) for conducting the journey to the envisioned desired state; 3. The web of leaders required to actually implement the plan and achieve the vision. These two roles are almost always done in partnership with senior leadership. Combining the direction of the Visionary and the structure of the Architect provides the foundation on which others throughout the organization can come together to take on their leadership roles. That foundation is your highest leverage opportunity as CEO. “Delegating doesn’t mean done” Other Points of Leadership Leverage Beyond a focus on these two roles, your involvement is really a question of where you think you can make the greatest difference over the course of the journey. Your senior executives and then your middle managers can take the lead on the other roles as more and more people are engaged and effective leadership extends out into the organization (the leadership web). However, “delegating doesn’t mean done,” so attention to the building and maintaining of the leadership web along with ongoing accountability are two areas of continuing high leverage. These fall to the Catalyst and then the HeroicLeaders.com  Builder and the Guide. The most deceptive areas that you might want to watch closely are: 1. The process of building the capabilities required for success in the envisioned desired state and 2. The final process of aligning and attuning the organization and its people. These are strategies of the Builder (the mastery process) and the Integrator and they require a lot of discipline because these are areas that are usually overlooked by organizations. A Note on Scale for CEOs If you are CEO of a smaller organization, your roles may be more extensive than that described here. Personal style can also influence the scope and scale of a CEO’s role. The other factor that can make a difference is the capability of senior and middle management. The stronger the organization’s management, the less focus is required of the CEO. How to Get a Good Idea of Possible Benefits – Fast There are several ways to quickly determine if the site will provide the change leadership structure you are looking for. It is designed to provide very clear and intuitive common ground around which people at all levels of an organization can align their efforts – essential for CEOs. 1. Review the guiding questions in the QuickStart packet on the power of clear leadership roles and strategies (click the download tab). These questions are designed to walk a leadership team through the process of determining the highest leverage tactics for each of the core leadership strategies for leading a journey of change. There are also templates for organizing the work. You can imagine leading your senior team through the questions and the possible outcomes. This QuickStart can be used to prepare for a journey or assess performance and next steps if in the midst of a journey. 2. Watch the first three minutes of the introductory video. This will give you a good overview of how the site is laid out around the four sources of leadership power, including the implementation guides for each (QuickStarts). 3. Skim the summaries for each of the four core chapters (leadership commitment, knowledge, strategies and webs). These are three to five pages long and designed for easy skimming (they are not heavy on text). The summaries will give you an idea of the possible foundation you can provide the organization to establish common ground about what to expect as well as direction and roles. 4. Just poke around in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section. The questions can be seen at a glance, so just see if any match the questions you have. HeroicLeaders.com