You’re good at what you do.

People trust your instincts.

You know the right answers. But what if that is exactly what is slowing you down?

In the optimisation dilemma, success breeds efficiency. And efficiency is often mistaken for improvement. Surface optimisers love this. They make things neat. They shine the process. They eliminate friction. They make it look easy. But here is the problem. When your expertise is never challenged, you stop challenging it yourself. CXOs, you know this story. Your team rely on your vision. Your stakeholders ask you to validate. And gradually, you become a filter, not a frame. Expertise turns into an excuse to avoid challenge. A rationale for habit. A reason for default.

You say,

“This worked before.”

“We know how this ends.”

“No need to reinvent.”

But what if there is? What if that thing that feels like excellencies actually inertia. The reality is, what made you successful yesterday may be what’s holding you back from growth today.Optimisation loves patterns. But patterns don’t always make for progress. And when the surface is smoothed out, you might not notice the problems underneath. Surface optimisers often optimise for the visible. Metrics. Timelines. Efficiency. But the work that matters often exists below the line.The hesitations. The resistance. The quiet stalling. Teams won’t tell you this explicitly. They will nod. They will follow your process. They will deliver. But gradually, their initiative erodes. Their creative tension withers. Their thinking becomes an echo of yours. Expertise turns into a ceiling, not a springboard.CXOs, this is not a pitch to forget your knowledge. It is an invitation to regard it as a base, not a boundary. Ask yourself: When was the last time you were wrong about your instincts?

When was the last time your process was torn up, not tweaked? When was the last time your team made an assumption about you, without fear of retribution? Optimisation is the act of making better decisions, not faster ones. And real improvement doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes it feels inefficient. Messy. Unclear. That is how you know it’s working. Surface optimisers are masters at delivery. But delivery is not the same as direction. Let your expertise inform, not dictate. Let it help you ask questions, not handwrite the answers. Because the teams that progress are not the ones that revere expertise. They are the ones that stand on it, question it, and sometimes, pull it down. So the next time you find yourself grasping for the familiar, pause. Ask yourself what might happen if you didn’t know best. It might be the start of something better than what you have already made efficient."