Hi {{ first_name }},
After speaking to more than 50 groups this past year, I noticed several emerging patterns. A few Chairs found them useful while shaping their 2027 plans, so I decided to share them with my Chair community.
First, I want to thank the Chairs who let me test these findings when I spoke to their groups. Only by watching how Members react can I discern a rare, meaningful idea vs what could've been written by a McKinsey consultant or a LinkedIn influencer.
The first pattern I want to share today:
We are encouraging Members now to get their planning together for 2027 by using their Operating Systems or what they learn in speaker sessions.
Makes sense.
But here’s the problem I kept seeing in your rooms:
Most CEOs are not short on plans.
They are drowning in them.
Strategic plans. AI plans. Talent plans. Culture plans. Succession plans. Plans to fix the plans. Somewhere, a consultant is probably creating a laminated dashboard to measure the plan about the plans.
And yet, the same CEOs keep asking some version of the same question:
“Why aren't we executing?”
Not a new question. We see academic papers published on it every decade.
But that question became the doorway into deeper exploration of the Member world.
What confused me was your groups did not reveal a lack of intelligence, discipline, or ambition. Our CEOs are sharp. Many have solid systems. Many have been exposed to excellent speakers, tools, books, frameworks, and operating models.
Still, execution stalls.
So I began asking a different question:
What if the problem isn’t what we've been thinking?
What if the organization no longer has the energy to metabolize all the plans being fed into it?
That sounds strange until you see it happening.
How many of your CEOs added an AI initiative this past year?
Then a talent initiative?
Then a culture initiative?
Then another dashboard?
Then another meeting to review the dashboard?
But by the next 1-1 you noticed . . . silence.
Are the plans bad?
Or is their organization already metabolically overloaded.
BTW, I don’t have all our Chairs in my community so feel free to in share case I missed someone. And if you received this from another Chair, just email me and I'll put you on the list
That is the pattern that inspired my new research:
Could execution failure be an energy problem, not a planning problem?
But where's the data?
Right here in our world.
In Vistage’s Q2 2026 CEO Confidence Index, “Current Economic Climate Dampens CEO Confidence,” 70% of Members reported burnout at least occasionally, and 28% reported it frequently or daily. Their research team called burnout a defining feature of today’s leadership environment, not a seasonal complaint.
That number matters because burnout does not just affect the CEO. It leaks into the organization’s ability to execute.
Could this explain why Members often know what needs to happen but still don’t get it done?
I know that’s as frustrating for you as it was for me when I was a Chair.
Like you, I challenged Members.
But what if some Members don't need more confrontation?
What if their company has exhausted itself pretending discipline means adding another initiative? Or organizational exhaustion disguises itself as strategic discipline?
The company looks busy.
The leadership team sounds aligned.
The scorecards are colorful.
But underneath the polite theater, strategic energy is sucked into administration. Or there's energy leaking everywhere: weak accountability, unresolved conflict, dead-weight managers, phantom leaders, doomed projects nobody wants to name, and teams mistaking activity for progress.
I added new diagnostic piece to my speech that you can use now with Members. Not because it’s another planning tool. They have enough tools.
It's a new way of thinking.
When I exposed the Metabolic Organization concept, Members grabbed onto it fast. And I think when you use it, you’ll see the same reaction.
HOW? Do this next with your Members
Start asking them more dangerous diagnostic questions about energy.
For example:
Where is your organization wasting the energy needed to execute what you already know matters?
That question changes the room and I hope it changes your 1-1s and exec sessions in 2027.
Use it to move the conversation away from better planning and toward energy leakage. Shift it from “How do I get my team to plan better?” and toward “What's draining my organization’s ability to act?”
Very different conversation.
More useful.
Less polite.
In the next report, I’ll share the biggest energy leaks Members surfaced — the ones that made them shift in their chairs.
Always a good sign.
--- Feel free share this with other Chairs who didn't get it.
Or, if a Chair sent this to you, let me know so I can add you to the list to get future research reports. ----
Hope this was useful.
Best,
Don Schmincke
Researcher, Author, Speaker
[email protected]
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