Directing a startup in 2025 requires holding two roles in permanent tension. On the one hand, the performer: focused on the operational, product delivery, measurable growth. On the other, the explorer: attentive to weak signals, ruptures, areas of strategic uncertainty. However, executing and exploring request neither the same resources, the same rhythms, nor the same instincts. This structural dilemma of the CEO is rarely addressed head -on, but it is decisive. Poorly managed, it produces inertia, blindness or dispersion. Well negotiated, it becomes an advantage.
Execute: deliver, stabilize, make profitable
Execution is the visible side of the CEO profession. It requires rigor, cadence, focus. It is the terrain of the plan produced, weekly metrics, value chain. It is based on a performance logic: each decision must improve a key variable – acquisition, retention, income, margin.
In this posture, the CEO is an operator. He coordinates, pace, measure. He assures that the organization transforms its vision into concrete deliverables. In the short term, it is a condition of survival. Without execution, there is no customers, income or credibility.
But running, alone, is no longer enough. Because the environment evolves faster than roadmaps.
Explore: question, observe, reposition
Exploring is to expose yourself to the unknown. It is to invest time on questions without immediate king. It is to test a hypothesis, to imagine a new border produced, to observe the changes in the market.
It is also to accept break down what works To better anticipate what will come. In reverse of the execution, the exploration is ineffective by nature: it produces little, but discovers a lot. She disturbs the organization because she introduces doubt where certainties are expected.
And yet, Any company that does not explore becomes obsoletesometimes without even seeing him coming.
The asymmetry of the dilemma
This dilemma is not symmetrical. It is always more valued (and more measurable) to execute. The teams expect rapid decisions. Investors ask for curves. The market judges on delivery, not on intuition.
Result: many CEOs sacrifice exploration by contextual pressure. They become better conductor, but less good strategists. And discover too late that they optimized an outdated trajectory.
Conversely, some very visionary profiles lock themselves in abstraction. They theorize, rotate too quickly, tire the teams and lose the link with the operational.
The solution is neither in the withdrawal, nor in the flight forward. She is in the Conscious management of balance.
Know how to oscillate: the hidden competence of the CEO
The rational CEO does not choose between executing or exploring. He alternateaccording to a specific discipline:
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- He sanctuarizes strategic timeevery week, for exploratory reflection (watch, weak signals, market calls, tests).
- He structures the team for delegate execution At the right level, without microgestion.
- He accepts immediately suspend the immediate efficiency To put a new hypothesis or test a calculated risk.
- He assesses his decisions to two horizons: the quarter And the next two years.
- He enrolled in his culture that Changing your mind is a skillnot weakness.
In other words, he assumes that the company is not a straight line, but a series of adjustments in the uncertain.
Concrete examples of well negotiated rocking
- Figma explored the passage of a solo design tool to a collaborative ecosystem, integrating non -linear feedbacks from its community. A paid exploration.
- Airbnb executed in the extreme during its growth, but managed to explore in depth during the pandemic to redefine its product around the “slow trip”.
- Slackinitially video game, becomes a productivity platform via a strategic rocking. Exploration is essential when execution stagnates.
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