One letter can have a surprising impact on the future value of your company. It's the difference between working in your business and working on it.
This distinction comes up often in our CEO Collective discussions because it's one of the biggest challenges CEOs face. The demands of running a business have never been greater. Customers expect more, technology continues to reshape industries, and attracting and developing great people requires constant attention. Every day brings another issue that feels urgent, and it's easy to convince yourself that once things settle down, you'll have more time to think strategically.
In my experience, that day rarely comes. The busiest CEOs are often the ones who need strategic thinking the most, yet the constant demands of the business leave little room to step back and ask where the company is headed. This is one of the critical jobs and responsibilities you have as CEO. There is no one else in the business who has your perspective across the entire business. All the employees in the organization and the future of the business itself are dependent on your ability to work on the business.
Working in the business is the work that keeps the organization moving. It's hiring people, coaching employees, solving customer issues, reviewing financials, approving decisions, and making sure commitments are met. These responsibilities are essential.
The challenge is that operational work never ends. Every completed task is replaced by another decision that needs your attention. Before long, weeks turn into months, and you've spent nearly all of your time responding to today's needs instead of preparing for tomorrow's opportunities.
Most CEOs want to spend more time on strategy. The problem isn't intent. It's that operational issues arrive with a sense of urgency, while strategic work rarely does. Without discipline, the urgent gradually pushes aside the important.
Working on the business requires a different perspective. It means intentionally stepping back from the demands of the day and asking different questions. What capabilities will this company need three to five years from now? What assumptions should we be challenging? Where is our industry headed, and are we positioning ourselves to lead or simply react?
Those questions rarely produce immediate results, which is why they're easy to postpone. Yet they're often the questions that determine whether a company continues to grow or gradually loses its competitive edge.
Strategy isn't just an annual planning exercise. It's the ongoing work of strengthening your leadership team, investing in new capabilities, identifying changing customer needs, and making decisions that increase the long-term value of the business.
Strategic thinking doesn't happen when the business becomes less demanding. It happens because you decide it's important enough to protect time for it.
That may mean stepping away for an off-site planning session, meeting with peers who challenge your thinking, attending conferences that expose you to new ideas, or simply setting aside uninterrupted time to reflect without the constant pull of email and meetings. Those investments improve the quality of the decisions that shape your company's future.
Your calendar communicates your priorities as clearly as your words.
When your leadership team sees you making time to think strategically, challenging assumptions, and looking beyond today's issues, they begin to understand that this isn't optional. Building the future of the business is part of everyone's job.
Organizations don't become more strategic by accident. They become more strategic because their leaders intentionally make time to work on the business, even when working in it demands their attention.
The distinction may seem small, but over time it influences innovation, growth, culture, and long-term value.
What can you do today to create more space to work on your business, not just in it?
