Consultant, a good way for CEO ?

Interesting article from Ron Ashkenas trying to match consultant quality and leaders quality. Many of us have been or still are consultant in well-known organization. I thought it would be interesting to confront our views. From Ron’s perspectives, he found 3 main qualities that a leader should develop to be able to perform as a CEO: – analytical skills but with room for intuition – objectivity and detachment – strategical as well as operational skills While one can never conclude with a definitive answer, i thought it was still  interesting to confront those qualities. Given my experience and my French education, I would definitely agree with Ron with the last one, as we French are trained too much on the power of idea and tend to disconsider a bit the ability to deliver. This was true most of my career and I always found it funny about how many people would care for an idea’s birthright but would definitely not fight to implement it. Obviously, given the circumstances where I’m writing this post, I’m on the Doers side and I strongly believe that while many people around the world may have the same idea as me, the difference lies in our ability to ‘make it happen’. Concerning the analytical skills, although I consider myself a big data crunch fan, I would have to disagree for 2 reasons: – analytical skill is not about taking the right decision, it’s about setting your priorities and not loosing time on issues that are not worth your time. My position has changed a bit since I started working ( data fan) and had an executive position in a large company: a decision is always made on partial knowledge of the situation and risks appraisal. Too much analytical can then leads to endless loops and no action taken. I’m now in favour of: let’s try it and see what happens, we’ll learn from our mistakes, and have a B-plan if it’s a big mistake. Off course, it does not mean you should not conduct a data analysis of your problem, but simply that you should not count on it to take the decision: there are no good decisions, just decisions. – second point lies in the fact that analytical skill do not replace ability to sale. Sale everything, i mean: your vision and strategy internally, your company to VCs, funds and large customer, your products to customers … Analytical skill tend to let people think that business is mathematical. Although, as Ron says, it helps figure out a problem, it’s still another quality to be a good seller, a good story-teller. There I think Passion comes into play. Hegel was saying: « Nothing great was ever achieved without passion ». I would definitely put this one as a mandatory quality. See Steve Jobs to get a hint on how far passion can lead you. In the end, I deeply think that as long as you’re a consultant that understands that consulting is just giving advices and that real business start after you left, then you’re OK.