Becoming a Transformational Strategist: The CEO Horizon Framework

When playing a game of Buzzword Bingo, the center square would almost certainly read “Transformation.” Nearly every company claims to be in the middle of one.

Audiences have raised their expectations beyond the rhetoric: they look for a CEO who can articulate a future vision that feels credible, confidence-inspiring, and worthy of investment.

The CEO Horizon™ framework is a simple way to map how leaders talk about performance, the current state of the business, versus possibility, the future state of the business and industry. As I outlined in my previous article, Visionary positioning is the “brass ring” for CEOs: they are setting the direction for others to follow and earning significant visibility in the process.

However, attaining Visionary positioning is difficult and relatively few CEOs reach it. So this article will dive into the “Transformational Strategist” market position in more depth, which can be highly achievable and profitable.

The Transformational Strategist

As illustrated in the CEO Horizon framework above, the Transformational Strategist is primarily focused on discussing their own company, while still leaning heavily toward future predictions. To illustrate the difference between the two right-hand quadrants, let’s think of a hypothetical example of two companies pursuing AI innovation:

• A Visionary CEO speaks about the future of AI broadly, predicting its impact on jobs, consumer behavior, energy markets, governments, etc. While they do discuss their own company’s AI progress, those developments are placed in context of the industry’s future state.

• A Transformational Strategist CEO discusses the future of AI for their own company, outlining benefits to their customers, investors, and employees. While industry trends might serve as a backdrop, the primary focus is why their own company is making the right moves to win.

The Transformational Strategist position will still command significant earned media[1] traction for companies of any size, and the impact is even larger if the company is “market moving.” This position also earns strong advantages with critical stakeholders:

• Customers and prospects who are making a significant future investment and want to know that the company’s direction is clear and differentiated

• Investors and financial analysts who are betting on the future performance of the company’s stock

• Employees and candidates whose engagement and retention depends on alignment with the company’s future direction

Transformational Strategist CEOs

I was fortunate to have participated in one highly successful company transformation: Adobe’s move from perpetual license, boxed software to a SaaS subscription model beginning in 2011. It became a Harvard Business School case and set the pace for many other software companies that followed. The move was disruptive for Adobe’s customers, employees (especially the engineering, marketing, and sales teams), and investors who had to model the company’s outlook entirely differently.

Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen reinforced the value of the transforming model in every speaking venue, internally and externally, and the CFO and other senior leaders tailored and extended the message. While the growth of cloud computing was a backdrop, the focus was on the positive impact the move would have on Adobe’s own customers and business health: faster product innovation, lower cost to entry, and more predictable company revenue with lower overhead costs. While the changes were challenging, Adobe kept its stakeholders engaged and unlocked incredible stock growth in the years that followed.

There are many other visible examples of Transformational Strategist CEOs, including:

• Michelle Buck (Hershey): Evolved Hershey “from a candy company to a snacks company” through acquisitions and strategic market expansion.

• Satya Nadella (Microsoft): Evolved Microsoft’s internal culture (“learn-it-all” vs. “know-it-all”), setting the stage for major growth cloud computing and AI.

• Larry Culp (GE): Used manufacturing discipline and business model restructuring to materially improve GE’s performance and valuation.

Evolving Your CEO into a Transformational Strategist

If you or your CEO aspire to Transformational Strategist positioning, there is one simple key to success: you must be willing to talk about your company’s future state as fundamentally different from where it is today.

This sounds easy, but it can be complex, especially for large and established companies. If the future sounds too disruptive, it could “spook” the stakeholders that you need to keep engaged. If it isn’t bold enough, the company won’t be viewed in a transformational light.

Ironically, a company facing significant market challenges might have less to lose in setting a bold or controversial future direction. But a company that is performing well with positive incremental growth might feel there is too much risk in this transformational positioning.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer, and communication advisers to CEOs need to weigh the pros and cons for their company’s situation. But there is a lot of great evidence, including in classic business books like The Innovator’s Dilemma and How the Mighty Fall, that sticking with the status quo can hamper a company’s relevance over time.

To set transformational positioning, your messaging should answer three key questions:

1. What has changed that necessitates this transformation? This could be internal dynamics of the business and/or disruption in the external landscape.

2. Why will the new state be better than what exists now? Ideally, this will include positive outcomes for every major stakeholder group.

3. Why is the company uniquely capable of transforming to the future state? This is what gives stakeholders a reason to bet on the company, especially if it requires some short-term sacrifices.

Ready to Transform?

The CEO Horizon™ framework scales from the Fortune 100 to startups and is relevant for all levels of senior leadership. Look out for future posts, where I’ll dive into opportunities within the Expert Commentator quadrant as well as how to engage the C-Suite to complement the CEO.

I’m passionate about helping clients who are on this type of journey toward greater executive visibility and impact. To explore how Juran Strategies can help evolve your executive positioning, reach out.

[1] Earned media encompasses all positive visibility that isn’t paid for – such as press coverage, public speaking venues, investor commentary, and social media conversations. This contrasts with paid media, such as advertising, and owned media, which includes things like websites, company-owned blogs and social media accounts, and company-hosted events.

The CEO Horizon™ framework is a proprietary model developed by Juran Strategies LLC.