One of my first stops was Chicken House. The green awning out front still says "Since 1989," and the chicken rice tasted just as I remembered. One bite, and I was right back home.
Of course, I couldn't stop there. I had chendol at a hawker center, piled high with shaved ice, coconut milk, green jelly, and gula melaka. Then there was coconut ice cream at Co+Nut+ink, served right in a coconut shell.
But one of my favorite moments wasn't at a restaurant. It was sitting around a big round table at home, sharing satay, chicken wings, mee goreng, otah, and, of course, more chicken rice. We passed dishes around, laughed, and caught up with people who knew me long before I ever became a CEO. Those are the moments I treasure most.
As I thought about that trip, something occurred to me. If that chicken rice had tasted even slightly different, I would have known immediately. Not because I'm a food expert, but because I've been eating it for decades. I know what great chicken rice should taste like, and I recognize when it doesn't measure up.
And that got me thinking about leadership.
In business, we talk a lot about setting high standards, but here's the question I often ask CEOs:
“Does your team actually know what great looks like?” (Make this a callout quote)
That's the gap I see in so many companies.
A CEO Early Warning System is a one-page plan that defines what success looks like for an important goal, identifies the leading indicator that predicts it, and spells out what you'll do the moment that indicator turns yellow or red.
It's not another dashboard full of numbers; it's a decision you make ahead of time, so that when trouble starts, your team already knows what "off track" looks like and what to do about it.
Most problems in a business don't show up as a crisis; they show up as drift. A pipeline that's a little thinner than last month. A project that's a week behind, then two. A key customer who stops returning calls as quickly.
When you're in the business every single day, drift is almost impossible to see. Going home after time away is the opposite: you notice every change immediately, because you're comparing it to a clear picture in your head.
Your goals need that same clear picture. If you haven't defined what green looks like, and what an unacceptable result looks like, you won't notice the slide until it's obvious to everyone. By then, it's usually expensive.
You can't catch a problem early if you never decided what “on track" means.
I learned this the hard way years ago at Metasys, when I woke up at 2 a.m. knowing something was wrong even though every number on my desk looked fine. I wrote about that night and the dashboard it led to in How to Build an Early Warning System: A CEO's Guide to Leading Indicators. My KPIs were telling me about last month. I needed something that told me about next month.
A leading indicator is the thing you can see today that predicts the result you'll get later, but not every leading indicator is a good one. Before you trust yours, put it through two tests:
If your leading indicator can't pass both, keep looking. Ask yourself: “If we were going to miss this goal, what would we see first?"
This is the part most leadership teams skip, and it's the part that matters most.
When a goal turns yellow in the middle of a busy quarter, what usually happens? A long discussion. Some debate about whether it's really yellow. A plan to “keep an eye on it." Meanwhile, the clock keeps running.
Now imagine you had already agreed, weeks earlier, on exactly what you would do if that indicator turned yellow, and exactly what you would do if it turned red. No debate, no scrambling; you just act.
That's the difference between a team that reacts and a team that responds. Spicy conversations are much easier to have when nothing is on fire yet.
Trust me, I've made this mistake myself. I've sat in meetings where we spent more time arguing about the color than fixing the actual problem.
This is why we built the CEO Early Warning System, one of the tools that goes with my book, The Journey to CEO Success. It walks you through one important goal at a time:
To get the most out of it:
Crises are expensive. They consume time, energy and resources you never get back, and they steal attention from the opportunities that move your business forward.
For your most important goal this quarter, do you already know what you'll do the moment it turns yellow?
Download the free CEO Early Warning System and fill it out for your most important goal. If you'd like help building yours, book a free leadership discussion {insert link to CEO & Executive Coaching booking page} to learn more about our CEO and Executive Coaching.
I knew in one bite whether my chicken rice was right. Your team should know in one glance whether your most important goal is.