Intensive workshop · Leadership
From operator to CEO
The change of trade nobody announces: stepping out of the business in order to run it.
- Duration
- 4 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 6 to 18 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
Almost every owner of a small company got there by being good at something: selling, installing, cooking, auditing. The business grew because that person was good at it.
Then the same talent becomes the ceiling. The day has the same number of hours, every decision still passes across the same desk, and the company stops growing at the pace of its market and starts growing at the pace of one calendar. Nobody announces this change of trade. There is no moment when someone says "from today your job is a different job", which is why most people discover it exhausted.
What it covers
The workshop separates two jobs that routine keeps fused: operating — making things happen today — and directing — making the company able to do them without you tomorrow.
It works on the participant's actual calendar, not on a model. The first part sorts where the week goes and how much of it genuinely requires the owner; the answer is usually uncomfortable. The second builds the handover: what gets delegated, to whom, against which written decision criteria, and what gets reviewed instead of supervised.
The third part is the hardest and the one that holds the rest up: what a CEO does with the time that frees up. A calendar emptied without new work to fill it refills with operations within six weeks.
What participants learn
- Tell the work of operating from the work of directing, against a real week.
- Identify which decisions only the owner can take and which are kept out of habit.
- Write decision criteria that make delegation possible without losing control.
- Design the executive routine that occupies the freed time.
- Define the signals that show whether the handover is working.
Agenda
- Operating and directing: two trades, one person
- Calendar audit: where the week actually goes
- Decisions kept by habit versus decisions that cannot be delegated
- Written decision criteria as a delegation tool
- Reviewing instead of supervising: cadence and evidence
- The gap afterwards: what a CEO does with freed time
- Early signals that the handover is failing
- What changes once the owner stops being the bottleneck
What the organisation leaves with
- A classification of the owner's own calendar between operations and direction.
- A list of decisions to hand over, each with written criteria and an owner.
- A weekly executive routine with defined content.
- A set of warning signals to catch the relapse.
Programme details
- Format
- Intensive workshop
- Also available as
- Workshop · Corporate training day · Executive programme
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Owners and founders of small and mid-sized companies.
- Managing directors who reached the role from operations.
- Partners who share direction and operations without separating them.
- Second generations inheriting a company run by its founder.
Frequently asked questions
- Does it help if I do not yet have a team to delegate to?
- Yes, and it may be the best moment. Half the workshop builds decision criteria, which is exactly what should exist in writing before hiring someone to apply them. Delegating without criteria produces the same load with more steps.
- Is this a personal productivity workshop?
- No. Personal productivity aims at one person doing more; this aims at the company depending on one person less. Those are different goals and occasionally opposite ones.
- Does it make sense for two partners?
- Very much. When two partners both operate and direct, the split is usually implicit, and the implicit part surfaces on the day both assumed the other was covering something.
Related articles
The decisions you make without noticing you are making them
Not deciding is also a decision, and it usually costs more. Four decisions most businesses make by omission, and what each one costs.
Read more →The problem is almost never where it hurts
Symptom and cause rarely live in the same place. Why fixing what hurts tends to leave the business unchanged, and what to look at instead.
Read more →Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.
