Leadership Insights
From Planner to Architect: Redefining Leadership for a New Era
4 min read
In the past, leadership success was often measured by the ability to drive results, enforce control, and compete fiercely. This traditional scarcity mindset focused on competing for existing value rather than creating new opportunities.
Today, this approach is no longer sufficient. CEOs must shift from a planner mindset to an architectural one, reimagining value creation and fostering collaboration.
Build the architectural muscle
Transitioning from planner to architect requires a fundamental shift in mindset and approach. For many CEOs, especially those promoted from operational roles, it’s easier to focus on cost-cutting or optimising current systems than to embrace transformative thinking and solutions.
Leading as an architect means exploring possibilities that lack immediate clarity and resisting the temptation to revert to linear strategies and what has been done before.
Engage the board
To transition from a planner to an architect, CEOs must bring their boards along in redefining success and embracing a future-focused perspective. Rather than optimising for existing performance measures, the CEO and board should co-create a culture and ways of working that value innovation and long-term transformation.
Addressing the definition of success is critical. Misalignment can lead to divergence between the CEO’s vision and the board’s expectations. Therefore, the board must support new frameworks for evaluating performance, recognizing that experimentation, risk, and occasional failure are essential for creating new value.
In an abundance mindset, failure, learning from what didn’t work, and quickly course correcting are understood as a necessary part of innovation. CEOs must work with the board to adopt this perspective, ensuring that evaluations and incentives reflect a willingness to take calculated risks. In this context, success becomes less about immediate rewards and more about long-term impact and transformation.
Leverage the executive team
As architects, CEOs must foster psychological safety within their teams. This means enabling members to share bold ideas, experiment freely, give and receive feedback, and challenge the status quo without fear. This culture shifts the focus from merely protecting existing value to imagining new possibilities.
Under an architectural mindset, a high-value creating team becomes a continuous learning system, seamlessly integrating external trends and opportunities. CEOs should empower their teams to act as co-creators, aligning efforts toward transformative goals.
Rethink your competition
A scarcity mindset frames business as a zero-sum game. In contrast, architectural CEOs reimagine partnerships and competition to unlock greater value for all. Instead of viewing competitors solely as threats, they explore opportunities to collaborate, creating new value that benefits the broader ecosystem.
Tesla's decision to open its Supercharger network to competitors, is an example of this abundance-minded collaboration, driving faster adoption of electric vehicles and creating a larger customer base for all players.
Consider interim leadership
Organisational relationships and internal dynamics, while essential for stability, can stifle innovation. CEOs can leverage interim leadership to inject innovative perspectives and challenge ingrained mentalities.
Interim executives can often question assumptions, introduce new ideas, and disrupt entrenched patterns, opening the door to transformative change.
By normalizing this approach and rotating leaders into different roles or incorporating interim assignments as part of succession planning, CEOs signal that innovation, learning, and adaptability are priorities at every level.
Building this muscle takes intentional effort. CEOs must ask themselves if they are reimagining the future or merely optimising the present. Engaging a trusted thought partner – a member of the executive team or an external advisor – can provide a safe space for exploring bold ideas. Our Leadership Advisory Practice helps CEOs shift from scarcity thinking to collaborative value creation, designing a future of innovation and sustainable growth.
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