How New CEOs Can Balance Strategy and Execution

As we emerge from the Covid-19 crisis, companies will need to drive short-term results while also rethinking strategy amid seismic shifts in competitive environments and ways of working. It’s not strategy vs. execution; it’s strategy and execution with the right balance in the right timeframes. New CEOs, in particular, can struggle with this balance. A three-phase process can help. In the first 90 days, the focus should mostly be on understanding and defending the company’s existing core businesses. In the next 90 days, priorities should shift to identifying ways to extend the core business by expanding the portfolio and/or entering promising adjacent markets. In the final six months of the first year, the new CEO should lay the groundwork for transcending the core business to support sustainable growth.