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profit this year and the shareholders, who at last year’s AGM vociferously
demanded a quick return on their investment, will be happy.

Choices

1. Your responsibility as a chief executive is to the shareholders. Exploit
the short-term opportunity. Keep the shareholders off the board’s
back in the short term and try to conserve enough of the extra profit
to bring in additional resources to accelerate progress toward the
strategic goals next year and thereafter.

2. Keep your focus on the strategy. Avoid anything that diverts attention
from the mission.

3. Put the dilemma before the board. Try to get consensus and go with
whatever decision the board makes.

Situation four

You are the marketing director. Your advertising agency has developed a
plan that will take you head to head against a bigger competitor. If it is suc-
cessful the plan will deliver a massive increase in sales and revenues, but
given the much greater resources of the competitor it is a high-risk tactic.

Choices

1. Go for it! Business is about risk.

2. Carefully assess your own competitive strengths and weaknesses and
develop a series of comprehensive marketing and sales campaigns to
pick off weaker competitors one by one, pitting your known strengths
against their identified weaknesses, strengthening the company with
worthwhile extra revenues and profits until it is ready to take on the
giants.

Part two

Consider how true the following statements are of you.
Please score them as follows:

Absolutely true of me all the time: 4
True of me most of the time 3
Rarely true of me 2
Never true of me 1

1. I think best under pressure.
2. I love volatility and uncertainty.
3. Complexity makes decision-making more interesting.
4. I believe that inspiration is as important as perspiration.

90 Key management questions