Question
What jobs chiefly consist in defining and interpreting the meaningful external reality for others?
Answer
For quite a while I used to think A. G. Lafley had it wrong. His original quote implicitly restricted this description to true leaders, i.e. ONLY the CEO.
I felt that this task of connecting external to internal reality was central to other jobs as well. "Product manager" is one important one.
But now I am back to thinking that this is a job that only the CEO can do. Why? Because individual product managers and other inside-outside connector jobs always deal with fractional realities. They are necessarily frogs in wells, and SHOULD be, like lawyers whose job is to make the best case for their client, not for the truth.
The CEO is the only role whose job is "defining and interpreting meaningful external reality for others" in a complete way. The buck stops there. The CEO interprets ALL external reality for the WHOLE corporation. Their larger realities can subsume individual frog-in-the-well realities. Lawyers must accept how the judge synthesizes the realities presented by the two sides.
I felt that this task of connecting external to internal reality was central to other jobs as well. "Product manager" is one important one.
But now I am back to thinking that this is a job that only the CEO can do. Why? Because individual product managers and other inside-outside connector jobs always deal with fractional realities. They are necessarily frogs in wells, and SHOULD be, like lawyers whose job is to make the best case for their client, not for the truth.
The CEO is the only role whose job is "defining and interpreting meaningful external reality for others" in a complete way. The buck stops there. The CEO interprets ALL external reality for the WHOLE corporation. Their larger realities can subsume individual frog-in-the-well realities. Lawyers must accept how the judge synthesizes the realities presented by the two sides.