17: Your Boss Should Be Unreasonable
Unreasonable is OK, Evangelical Isn't
After my last post about evangelical forecasting, I want to clarify something: unreasonable leaders aren't the problem. In fact, they're essential.
The best CEOs I've worked with are pushy, demanding, and completely unreasonable about accepting mediocrity. They challenge assumptions, push teams beyond comfort zones, and drive breakthrough performance. Without that unreasonable edge, businesses stagnate.
But there's a crucial difference between being unreasonable and being evangelical about forecasting. One drives results, the other drives ruin.
Good Unreasonable vs Evangelical Unreasonable
Here's the key distinction you need to understand:
Good Unreasonable challenges execution and performance. It demands results through better market engagement, superior customer service, and operational excellence. It's grounded in reality but refuses to accept current limitations.
Evangelical Unreasonable overrides data and planning with faith-based numbers. It ignores market signals and pushes inventory based on wishful thinking. It's detached from reality and creates financial disasters.
The difference? Good unreasonable leaders trust their planning processes while being completely unreasonable about execution against those plans.
Where to Channel Unreasonable Energy
Smart unreasonable leaders focus their pressure on the front end - sales, market, and customer performance. Be completely unreasonable about:
Sales team performance - Challenge them to find new markets, convert more prospects, and serve existing customers better
Market penetration - Push into territories competitors think are impossible
Customer experience - Demand excellence in service delivery and relationship building
Product innovation - Refuse to accept that your offering can't be improved
This creates genuine market pull that drives inventory through your system naturally.
What Good Unreasonable Looks Like
Being Unreasonable About Sales Execution
Don't accept "the market's tough" as an excuse. Push your team to find customers who are buying, even in difficult conditions. Demand they articulate exactly why prospects aren't converting and what they're doing about it.
Being Unreasonable About Customer Experience
Refuse to accept DIFOT problems as inevitable "supply chain issues." Dig into root causes. Challenge poor planning, inadequate communication, or unrealistic customer expectations that aren't being managed.
Being Unreasonable About Market Intelligence
Don't let your team rely on anecdotes and hunches. Demand real insight. Who's buying? Who's not? Why? What opportunities are you missing because you're not looking hard enough?
Being Unreasonable About Operational Excellence
Push your teams to be more responsive to actual demand signals. Challenge them to reduce lead times, improve flexibility, and eliminate waste. But base this on real performance metrics, not wishful thinking.
The Balance: Trust Planning, Challenge Execution
Here's what separates good, unreasonable leaders from evangelical forecasters: they trust their planning processes while being completely unreasonable about execution.
Your demand planners have built forecasts based on data, trends, and realistic assumptions. Trust that work. Don't override it with evangelical fervour about inflated growth numbers.
But be absolutely unreasonable about whether your teams are executing effectively against those plans. Are sales hitting targets? Are you converting the opportunities the market is actually presenting? Are you delivering the customer experience that drives repeat business?
This approach channels unreasonable energy into driving performance rather than distorting planning.
The Multiplier Effect
When you're unreasonable in the right places, something powerful happens: your unreasonable expectations start getting met by unreasonable results.
Sales teams find customers they didn't know existed. Market opportunities emerge that weren't visible before. Operational improvements create capacity you didn't think was possible.
And here's the best part: this growth is sustainable because it's based on genuine market demand pulling inventory through your system, not artificial forecasts pushing inventory into your system.
My Last Word
As a CEO, don't apologise for being unreasonable - just be unreasonable about the right things. The same energy that drives breakthrough performance can destroy cash flow if misdirected into evangelical forecasting.
Be unreasonable about market performance, customer experience, and execution excellence. Trust your planning processes and let genuine market demand pull inventory through your system.
Your business needs your unreasonable edge - it just doesn't need your evangelical forecasting.
Where do you see the difference between good unreasonable and evangelical unreasonable in your organisation? How do you help redirect that energy productively?
Want to learn more? Visit me at www.planninglab.co.nz
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