Setting direction

What direction is, in practice

Direction isn’t a list of tasks. It’s the frame that lets the CEO and the teams decide which tasks to take on, which to defer, and which to refuse. Good direction is concrete enough to act on but loose enough that the company can interpret it for situations you haven’t anticipated.

Direction lives at three layers:

• Company direction — What the exocorp as a whole is for. The mission. The shape of who it serves. The kinds of bets it’s willing to make. Held at the company level by the CEO.
• Team mandates — Per-team responsibility. What each team owns, what authority it has, what outcomes it’s on the hook for. Held by each team.
• Constraints and posture — Things that aren’t mandates but shape behavior: the tone, the risk envelope, what triggers must come to you.

How to set direction

Open the CEO chat in the operator portal and talk. Plain language is fine — the CEO will turn what you say into durable direction. Useful patterns:

• Lead with the why — Start with the underlying intent, not the specific task. “We need to expand into mid-market this quarter” gives the company room to interpret. “Write a sales email for prospect X” doesn’t.
• Be specific about constraints — Vague constraints get translated into vague guardrails. If you have a hard budget, name the number. If a tone matters, give an example.
• Say what success looks like — The CEO will derive outcome metrics from this. The more specific, the more accountable the teams can be.
• Say what you’ll personally approve — Calls only you can make. Give the CEO an explicit list. It will surface those calls to you when they arise instead of acting on them.

Changing direction mid-stream

Direction changes. When something shifts — a competitor lands, a customer signal changes the picture, you decide the bet was wrong — you change direction in the chat. The CEO will:

• Re-evaluate in-flight work — Some work items will no longer make sense. The CEO will propose cancellations or scope changes; you approve.
• Adjust team mandates — If team mandates are now misaligned, the CEO will propose new ones. New mandates also need your sign-off.
• Surface affected promises — Any external commitments that the new direction affects get flagged. Some need to be renegotiated or formally breached — both are real events the company has to handle.
• Record the change — The new direction is captured in the knowledgebase with a date and the rationale. The company knows what it used to think and why it changed.

When the company pushes back

A good CEO will sometimes push back on direction it thinks is wrong. Common shapes:

• “This contradicts what we said last week.” — Useful. The CEO knows what you said before and can flag inconsistency. You can decide to override, or refine.
• “This will break promise X.” — The new direction conflicts with an external commitment. Either the commitment needs explicit handling (renegotiation, breach) or the direction needs adjustment.
• “The team doesn’t have the capability.” — The mandate can’t be carried out as written. Either you scope it down, or you add capability (a new team, plugin, skill). See Working with teams.
• “The evidence doesn’t support this.” — The CEO is grounding its position in something durable — an outcome review, a lab result. Treat it like advice from a senior team member, not as resistance.