CEO Leadership Insights - April 2025

“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

Albert Einstein

1879-1955

Physicist and Nobel Laureate

Offense or Defense?

Uncertainty can quickly push decision makers from offense to defense.. Vistage Speaker Marc Emmer offers a useful blog post for C-Level Executives that reminds us that “With chaos comes opportunity. The smart money looks for market imbalances. For retail investors, that may be in the form of stock market corrections, but for management teams that comes in other forms. So, the real question is:  What should you actually do right now as a business leader?”

If you’d like to get back on offense (instead of defense) before you go to the office on Monday, Mr. Emmer’s “The Strategy Page: Uncertainty Edition” will provide some useful tactics.

Gen Z's REAL Competition

Since Covid,  employees have had the better of the employment market, but the pendulum of power has started swinging back to employers.   This transition had begun before the unprecedent economic events of the past month and should surprise no one if the employment market deteriorates as a result.  ( I know there was a good employment report recently, but that’s backward looking. Wait.).

Gen Z’s employment prospects may be at greatest risk not only because of economic factors, but also due to technology as well; specifically, AI.  

NYU Professor and entrepreneur Scott Galloway warns that the  “youth labor market is quietly unraveling — and AI is accelerating the decline. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds hit 8.3% in February, more than double the jobless rate for workers between the ages of 25 and 54.”

Whether you’re an employer, parent or have young people in your life that you care about, I suggest you check out Professor Galloway’s recent blog post  “AI is Quietly Shutting Gen Z Out of the Labor Market.”   

The Biggest C-Suite Risk: Failure to Delegate

We rise in our careers by getting things done. The paradox of the ascent is that the higher we rise the more we must depend on others to perform the work we are ultimately responsible for.  The willingness and ability to delegate may be the most essential skill to attain the C-Suite. 

The inability, or unwillingness to do this has short circuited more than one career.  But getting work done through others requires that we trust in their intent and ability; in short, executives must take the risk of delegation for their companies and for themselves to succeed.  

A short HBR article How to Get Better at Delegating offers a roadmap for both new and veteran executives.  Pete Drucker once remarked that in organizations, the “bottle neck is always at the top of the bottle.”  Awareness of your willingness and ability to delegate and intention to master this fundamental core competence will determine how narrow or wide, and how high or low, the bottleneck is in your organization.   

As important as it is to delegate, it’s equally important to avoid the trap of encouraging, unintentionally, your subordinates to delegate to you.   To avoid this, I urge you to read another classic HBR article  “Who’s Got the Monkey?  (co-written by retired Vistage-Dallas Chair Don Wass).

Econ Recon:

A Corrected Market?:  Economist Brian Wesbury looks at the events of the past week:  “Obviously, the tariffs have been the catalyst behind the recent drop in stock prices. And stocks may go lower from here. But stocks were overvalued even before the tariffs and if tariffs weren’t the trigger for the drop in stocks, something else would have been.”  Check out his one page analysis of “Tariffs, the Economy, and Stocks.”

Rising pricing:  ITR Economics’ Lauren Saidel-Baker reports that through the end of March, inflation was “disinflating” but may not remain that way for long due in part to the tariff situation….and she reminds us not to lose site of the Fed’s Dual Mandate in planning pricing and production.  Check out ITR’s latest Fedwatch. 

Friends,

As you seek to grow the value of your business this year, where are you getting your advice? This will be an action-packed year of changes and opportunities.

Don't go it alone. My CEO peer advisory group consists of 19 high-performing, non-competing business owners. They share their experience to help each other solve their biggest challenges and capture their best opportunities, all in a confidential forum. As a result they grow faster, with less stress.

Contact me if you think you may be a candidate for our team. Typical members are growth-oriented CEOs/owners of southeastern New England businesses with revenues between $10 million and $200 million.

Do away with being 'lonely at the top'.

For those who celebrate it, I wish you a happy Passover or Easter! We have much to be thankful for!

Scott