The CEO Shift: When You Aim for the Wrong Target

I was in the middle of an outdoor yoga session facing Lake Superior when it hit me.

I wasn't actually committed to creating the future I kept talking about.

Not really. Not in the way that changes how you operate.

I coach founders on how to lead like a CEO — how to get out of the operational middle and build a team that performs without them. And there I was, still handling way too much of my own lead gen and sales process.

Because I hadn't done the work to hand it off properly.

I'd deviated from the outcome I said I was most committed to creating.

And it was costing me. Big time.

When I think back over the years and all the founders I've worked with, I can see patterns. Where they got stuck. How they got out. What separated the ones who stayed buried in the work from the ones who built something that actually runs without them.

The one thing that shows up most often is subtle enough that most founders never catch it.

We've been taught that success is defined by numbers. Test scores. Revenue amounts. Dollars in the bank.

So it's easy to see how we confuse metrics for outcomes.

A few years ago I worked with two founders whose goals were simple. Get to consistent $200K months. Increase margins by 5%. Reduce churn to less than 10%.

That was it. That was what got presented at the all-hands. No other guidance. No context.

The team didn't know which clients fit and which didn't. They didn't know what standards were non-negotiable or what tradeoffs were acceptable. Nobody connected the dots for them — that chasing revenue with the wrong clients was actually showing up as the low margins and high churn they were simultaneously trying to fix.

So they said yes to all the sales.

What happened? Scope creep. Bad-fit clients. Team burnout. Constant firefighting to save clients people didn't really want to serve anyway. More heroics every week just to keep delivery standing.

The revenue went up. So did the fires.

Client experience eroded. Team morale quietly collapsed. The team was fully committed — to what they were told was important. Not to the outcomes that would drive the real results.

What was missing wasn't AI, a magic tool, or another hire.

It was a clear, well-defined outcome about what the founders actually wanted to create. So we locked ourselves in a shared workspace in Utah for two full days to rewrite it all.

Here's the distinction that changed everything:

A metric is produced as a result of key actions. An outcome defines what you're committed to creating. That commitment informs which actions you take.

"$200K months" is a metric. It gives the team a number with no filter. Every dip triggers a new priority. Every new priority creates confusion. The spaghetti starts flying.

A clear outcome sounds more like: "Every client we work with has a clearly documented client success plan and SOPs so that performance will not suffer if a team member is out."

Now your team has a filter. They know what must be completed. They know what "good" looks like. And they understand what you are most committed to.

Revenue is evidence. It shows up when you're actually creating the right thing. An amazing client experience will result in upsells and referrals. That shows up on your top line. And the bottom one — you know, the one that really drives what stays in your bank account.

I've watched founders who were genuinely committed to a particular outcome completely abandon it the moment sales numbers dipped. They chose the metric over the outcome. And what it created was shifting priorities and a lot of scrambling.

The founders who build businesses that run without them double down on the outcome when things get hard.

"You can't map the journey if you don't know the destination."

I've worked with a client for a long time. One of his main actions — for actions and inactions alike — is always: but at what cost?

I sat in that question a lot last week.

When I finally slowed down and asked honestly, the price tag was higher than I wanted to admit. Mostly my time, which has been stretched thin lately.

The two founders above paid a different kind of price. Hires that never needed to happen. Lost team members. Damaged client relationships. Months spent tracking the wrong numbers — which is its own kind of irony, given that their backgrounds were in finance and data.

Not because they had a bad team. Because the team had no filter.

I've seen this take founders to the edge of closing their businesses down entirely. I've seen it cost people relationships they didn't get back.

In my last business, it cost me 3% equity — granted to someone who quit one month after the ink dried. That translated to multiple six figures at the time of the sale. And a personal relationship that didn't survive it either.

So when I say the foundation matters — I'm not speaking theoretically.

Try this before you plan anything else:

We are heading into Q3 fast. Most founders will spend the next few weeks building revenue targets and project plans.

Do this first.

Step 1: Name the outcome. Write down the single most important outcome your business is committed to creating this quarter. Not a revenue number. The experience you're committed to creating — for your clients, for your team, for yourself. Two sentences maximum. If you can't write it in two sentences, you don't have an outcome yet.

Step 2: Name the actions. What three to five things must happen consistently for that outcome to be created? These are your Priorities. If something isn't on this list, it waits.

Step 3: Name the evidence. Pick two or three lagging indicators that will show up if the outcome is being created. Revenue, retention, referrals, team capacity. Track the actions weekly. Check the metrics monthly. If the metrics aren't moving, go back to the actions — not the outcome.

One outcome. Prioritized actions. Measurable evidence.

Everything else is noise.

If what we covered today is showing up in your business — metrics without outcomes, a team chasing numbers with no filter, priorities that shift every week — that's not a motivation problem. It's a foundation problem.

It's exactly what we work through inside the 6-Step Bottleneck Breakthrough.

If you want to work through yours live, join me for the next free training. We'll build your outcome framework together, in real time, and you'll leave with a clear destination for the next 90 days.

Register for the next free live training

We were parked on the shores of Lake Superior when I had the realization I opened with.

There's something about being that far from the usual noise — no inbox, no notifications, just cold water and a lot of sky — that makes the truth harder to avoid.

I've built a business that runs from anywhere. That morning it ran without me while I was doing yoga on a rocky shoreline and having an inconvenient breakthrough.

That's what this is all for.

One shift at a time,

Christy

P.S. You just wrote down your Q3 outcome. Don't let it sit in a notebook.

Reply to this email and share it with me. I read every one and respond. If it's fuzzy, I'll tell you. If it's strong, I'll tell you that too.

Consider it a free gut check before Q3 hits.

The spaghetti noodles stop here.