Among most CEOs, there’s broad consensus: Senior leaders should focus on the “what”— purpose, vision, strategy, goals, resource allocation, and assembling a capable team. To protect their time for those high-level priorities, they must delegate the day-to-day operating decisions (the “how”) to subordinates. Peter Drucker, arguably the most influential thinker on the manager’s role, wrote, “The executive is not supposed to be a handyman. He is supposed to be a builder.” In the New CEO Workshop program that one of us (Nitin) coleads at Harvard Business School, the faculty admonish new chief executives to move beyond execution and focus on the big picture.