Presence As A Strategic Risk Tool
In modern organizations, the role of a CEO goes far beyond just setting strategy, looking at the finances, or representing the company to the public. Today, a leader has to manage both the visible and invisible parts of the business, the real day-to-day operations, the culture, and those quiet risks that can slowly change the company ' s fortunes. This brings up a big question: Should the CEO be“ in the kitchen”? By this, I mean being present in the operational heartbeat of the company, aware, sensing, and ready to act, without micromanaging or getting in the way of the team.
When Experience Reveals The Gaps: Two Situations That Redefined How I View CEO Presence
In my career, I have seen situations that made the importance of this kind of presence very clear. One moment took place when I was working in the Credit Division. Early one morning, the head of the credit monitoring department noticed an unusual alert on his report. More than twenty million shillings in interest had failed to accrue on a group of loan accounts. This wasn ' t the kind of issue that would stay quiet for long. As soon as it was discovered, word moved quickly among senior managers because we all knew how rare it was for such a large amount to slip through an automated process we all trusted.
The department head sent an email to his immediate boss and copied the CEO. Many of us thought this was necessary because of the potential impact on the bank. What surprised me was what happened next. The CEO did not panic, he didn ' t start shouting orders, and he didn ' t jump over the usual protocols. He acknowledged the message and guided the team to follow the established process, with the issue escalated to him for the appropriate executive engagement.
At first, I was surprised. Why wouldn ' t a CEO move immediately on something this big? Over time, I realized why. This CEO had built a disciplined system for how information reached him. He prioritized what was actually important and urgent over just a high volume of emails. His dashboard was set up to flag only the items that truly needed his attention, which allowed him to focus on things that had the biggest impact. He also held structured Monday morning reviews with his executive team to look at key developments, check the data, and discuss what it all meant. For matters requiring expedited attention outside the scheduled Monday engagements, he remained readily available for one-on-one consultations with his direct reports. His objective
13 MAL71 / 26 ISSUE was to ensure that any information reaching his desk was complete, validated, and decision-ready, thereby preventing reactive or unfocused judgments based on raw or unverified alerts.
By working this way, the CEO stayed connected to what really mattered without getting pulled into every single operational fire. He stayed“ in the kitchen,” not by being everywhere at once, but by designing routines that kept him aware and kept the team accountable. It was a practical lesson in how having the right structures allows a leader to see what’ s happening while still trusting their people to handle the first response.
Yet, even the most disciplined information system has its limits. Just as a seemingly flawless IT infrastructure can fail and produce a near-miss, so too can the channels and dashboards a CEO relies on to stay connected to the front lines. No system is perfect, and overreliance without periodic validation can leave critical blind spots.
Even the best dashboards can miss the warning signs, so CEOs must pair structured reporting with occasional direct observation and a culture that flags anomalies early, keeping one eye on the strategy and the other on the heartbeat of operations.
A second experience brought this principle to life in a different context. One Saturday last February, I visited a mid-sized organization I had engaged with on prior occasions. The office layout is simple yet telling: a small lobby leads to two doors, the CEO’ s office to the left and the general staff workspace to the right. The CEO keeps his door open not as a symbolic gesture of accessibility, but as a practical mechanism to maintain awareness. Through the narrow sightline of the doorway, he can monitor movement and activity in the workspace without intruding, creating a real-time, low-friction window into operations.
On the day of my visit, most of the team was in the field, leaving a single staff member in the office. During our discussion, that employee stepped out briefly, returning a few minutes later. The CEO called out the employee’ s name not to assign a task, but to verify the person’ s return. Even while fully engaged with me, he remained conscious that the workspace had been momentarily unattended. In a multi-tenant building, such lapses, however brief, carry potential risks ranging from unauthorized access to operational disruption.
What is striking is the naturalness of this executive vigilance. It is not policing, micromanagement, or reactive oversight. Nor is it conscious scanning of every movement.
Rather, it is a cultivated habit of presence, a blend of situational awareness, relational intelligence, and risk consciousness. This is a concrete illustration of what it means for a CEO to be in the kitchen, maintaining attentiveness to early signals of risk, observing operational realities in real time, and understanding the subtle dynamics that indicate how the organization is actually functioning.
A cautionary note: while this approach to situational awareness is effective, the CEO must continuously reinforce to his team that it exists solely to protect the organization and its operations, not to monitor staff personally. As Stephen Covey observes, trust is the currency of leadership, and without it, even the most disciplined systems of awareness can lose their effectiveness.
Both of these examples show a vital truth: a CEO ' s presence is about how they connect with people and systems. It’ s a mix of trusting people while having structured oversight. This kind of presence becomes a way to manage risk where the culture and the day-to-day operations meet. A CEO doesn ' t have to be physically everywhere to influence the business. Instead, they stay present through clear systems, consistent focus, and quiet observation.
These moments reveal a simple leadership truth: strategy may set the direction, but sustained, intelligent proximity is what keeps the organization safe.
Distance, Blind Spots, And Corporate Risk
As an organization grows, it is inevitable that the CEO will become more distant from the day-to-day operations. This distance isn ' t necessarily a bad thing; in fact, it’ s often required so you can stay focused on the big picture; strategy, vision, and long-term goals. However, that distance comes with a specific kind of vulnerability: blind spots. These are the gaps in your awareness where risks can quietly pile up, often turning into a full-blown crisis before the executive team even realizes there’ s a problem.
Leadership researcher Mark Murphy, in his 2026 work, describes a phenomenon he calls the“ feedback triple threat.” He found that leaders almost always overestimate how open they are to honest feedback. He observed three main hurdles: first, employees often hesitate to speak up because they fear the consequences or feel their input won ' t change anything. Second, leaders themselves often forget to ask the right questions or they misinterpret what they are told. Finally, even when the feedback is clear, it often isn ' t acted upon.