Those distant from decisions often have many opinions to offer.

Sports journalists tell team managers what they should have done in yesterday’s game and what trades are worth making for the second half of the season.

Political pundits tell elected incumbents how to vote on legislation if they want to be reelected and opposing candidates what to include in their platforms.

Business columnists tell CEOs what companies to buy, what assets to unload, where to cut costs, and how to allocate dividends.

It’s all noise to those who are supposed to be listening.

If you sit in the seat, you listen to customers, team members, mentors, data, research, and the instincts that develop as a result of all these factors over a lifetime. You don’t look to those who sit on the sidelines and fire in potshots.

Until you own the outcome, until you have felt the weight of what could result as the effect of your decision, you are largely consuming air when you tell us what we should do. We may be unsure, but you don’t know.

“Carry the bag” is a term most senior leaders understand. It dates back to the days of door-to-door salespeople who carried their wares in satchels, literally bearing the weight of the product to be sold from one household pitch to another. Today we think of it as maintaining a sales quota, but despite the fancy titles top business people may hold, when you’re in charge, if you don’t deliver the sales required to achieve agreed goals, everything else in a company quickly becomes a lot less critical.

The scope of sales responsibility in a company transcends the actual exchange of dollars for goods and services. You could be selling a new strategy to an ownership group or board. You could be selling your vision for change to public or private investors. You could be selling a new initiative to employees whose buy-in and expertise are critical to transforming an idea into action.

In every instance of competent management, whoever owns the responsibility for transformation takes the matter seriously, understanding that ideas often are a dime a dozen and execution matters more than lofty commentary. Actions have consequences. Outcomes are unpredictable and even fleeting, but regardless of win or lose, whoever owns the decision to take action owns accountability for its effect.

A company can grow, shrink, be reinvented, or become obsolete based on sometimes unpredicted and cascading ripple effects of chess moves made real. If you’ve ever carried one of these bags, you know the difference between opinions argued in a bar and making a hard call you can never completely predict.

When I read a columnist’s assessment of a complex situation and see their confident, succinct remarks on what a CEO should do at any moment in time, I wonder what audience they are targeting. Are their words just filling space on deadline, at best a form of toss-away entertainment? Are they setting a beat to reference in a subsequent story when a company doesn’t heed their wisdom to say, “I told you so?” Do they think their opinions will rally shareholders to align with their insights and lobby a company under their influence?

They know top management isn’t their audience. Top management thinks differently about opinions. If a critic is wildly wrong about something strategic, no one cares. If top management is wrong about something strategic, a lot of people care.

I often see former bosses of mine and accomplished colleagues receive such advice in publications of global note and otherwise. They don’t need this kind of advice. They are way ahead of you. They are getting advice they trust — and still carrying the bag in ways their public critics could seldom imagine.

I read a number of newspapers and newsletters on a daily business. I am always looking for insights. When a great journalist reports researched news credibly and objectively, then puts it in some form of relative or historical context, I am grateful. It helps me form opinions about tangential matters I can test in all kinds of ways.

It’s also immensely helpful when a disciplined reporter exposes lies, scams, market manipulation, and other illegal activity — all tentpoles of investigative journalism. When John Carreyrou shined a bright light on Theranos in the Wall Street Journal, he provided a public service. Eyes on hidden crime are noble, particularly the bravest voices who endure their own criticism until proven accurate.

When instead a lazier writer suggests the headline, “The list of X things this troubled CEO must do now,” I turn the page. If I could, I would hand that individual a bag and tell them to come back when their sales quota was met. I’m sure they would reject that notion as unrealistic and irrelevant, not their job. That would make my point.

There are many ways to be humbled, nothing quite so much as an unanticipated outcome. When you don’t get what you thought you would, you’re still left holding the bag — until you’re not. That’s the difference between an offered opinion and a real decision. One fades away and is forgotten instantly. The other is reality.

_______________

Photo: Pexels