I recently facilitated a gathering of 10+ CEOs who are all leaders of private equity-backed companies. These are talented, highly successful individuals, so you might expect that our conversations revolved around the cutting edge of innovation and breakthrough ideas.

Not really.

Most of these leaders are running companies with hundreds of millions in revenue. The individuals are focused on building and refining the right systems, plus upgrading and strengthening their leadership teams. They are deep into the fundamentals that can make or break the success of their rapidly growing businesses.

As these non-competitive individuals swapped lessons, they frequently focused on topics such as how do we create better incentive systems or what is the best source to find vendors who can do _______?

This is why when I counsel up-and-coming CEO talent that while you need to set a clear and inspiring direction, their greatest contribution is likely not going to be as a visionary or a strategic genius. No, your role is to install and build systems that can operate at a scale your company has never inhabited before. It requires intelligence and persistence, plus a solid grounding in the reality of your organization’s current capabilities.

Find and fix the weaknesses. Lay the groundwork for rapid growth. Get your systems right.