A pattern I've noticed as a CEO is that people will sometimes try to save me time by presenting just the specific question or items they're hoping to get sign off on.

I'm sure that in some ways I've caused this pattern by presenting as busy, and probably in other ways it's a learned habit people have developed from their career experiences. It's probably somewhat natural to try to save the CEO time, and many CEO's may be quite efficient at making decisions on much less data than I am.

But for me, I see it as a critical part of my job to strive to make great decisions, model how I approach doing that, and take every opportunity to help people grow by thinking through decisions holistically.

Many problems arise from companies being too siloed, and it's natural for someone in an individual contributor position to not always have the full picture of strategic choices across other areas. Similarly, I often lack the detail-level context that an individual has. Combining our forces, we can arrive at the optimal decisions.

As the CEO, I believe I am uniquely placed to keep the whole strategy in my head and draw connections where others may not spot them. My goal when helping teams make strategic decisions is to ensure that our combined efforts across the organization are interconnected and greater than the sum of their parts.

Over time, I've become better at spotting this habit early on and shifting the course of the conversation. I will regularly ask for more context and encourage us to step back to a higher level of context in a meeting before going back into the decisions that need to be made. Very often, we arrive at different outcomes than we would have by working only within the details.