Three Questions Every Investor Should Ask About Any Management Team Video Draft 28m 45s

Host Rachel Warren asks why the habits that earn executives a promotion can later make them struggle. Cornelia Cho says leaders build a personal “map” of how to succeed, but supply-chain disruptions, tariffs, political and economic shifts, technology, and environmental changes can make that map obsolete quickly. She compares leaders who think they are driving on a straight highway with people actually navigating an open road. Cho says record CEO departures for two consecutive years reflect this problem: the necessary information is distributed among finance, operations, suppliers, and other stakeholders, so leaders must combine those perspectives.

Cho says the challenge spans industries and company sizes because executives increasingly hold diverging views. She cites a Grant Thornton survey in which 39% of CIOs and CTOs believed their companies were fully ready to adopt AI, compared with only 7% of COOs; the survey included substantial overlap among companies. Cho identifies two pitfalls: autopilot, which assumes yesterday’s formula still works, and fear of the unknown, which narrows attention to familiar territory. Both can produce “perspective blindness,” especially when leaders are too exhausted by constant change to examine competing views.

Cho explains that AI affects departments differently: a CTO may focus on technological potential while a CHRO focuses on employee consequences, making translation between perspectives essential. Former DBS Bank CEO Piyush Gupta created channels for every employee to submit ideas, backed them with funding, and required customer-journey leaders to import useful practices from competitors or other industries into their KPIs. Cho’s three-step GEM process is to get up close and ask who is missing, go deep to build meaningful relationships, and map an evolving perspective. She cites Satya Nadella’s listening tour and later effort to combine Microsoft engineering, operations, finance, sales, and marketing around shared accountability.

Cho distrusts leaders who claim, “I know everything that’s happening around me,” because conditions change continuously. Her first test is whether leadership understands stakeholders, can anticipate change faster, and can articulate an opposing view; inability to state the other side suggests it is not understood. Second, she asks whether management updates assumptions—learning rather than merely confirming what it already believes. Third, she looks for weak signals, such as changing customer behavior or supplier concerns, because early signs can help a company see around corners before a larger shift becomes obvious.

For shareholders, Cho recommends comparing polished investor communications with what customers say publicly and with opinions that may exist inside the company but never reach investors. Her former private-equity approach—using past performance to predict future behavior—has become less reliable because “what got you here isn’t going to get you there.” Global leaders must continually compare perspectives across markets, including America and China, and interpret AI-generated knowledge in context rather than relying on expertise alone. Succession planning should likewise ask which skills will matter in five to ten years, involve the board and wider stakeholders, and prepare for integration rather than simply choosing a trusted familiar successor.

Cho says she and co-author Marshall Goldsmith wrote The Panoramic Leader after seeing how leaders who think differently can expose one another’s blind spots. Her most memorable interview was with Puno Tamaehu, who navigated a traditional sailing boat from Tahiti to China for more than 12,000 miles. When a storm tore the sail and supplies were threatened, he broke the arm of his glasses, sharpened it, and used it as a needle to repair the sail. Cho connects this to wayfinding: reading currents, animals, clouds, and other signals. Her advice to investors is to question an investment thesis, seek opposing views, and build “courageous curiosity” through small steps.