How CEOs can lead a team when the revenue target looks unreachable
When a revenue target looks unreachable, CEOs tend to get better results by holding their team accountable for the inputs it can control, rather than for the number alone. A revenue target is something a team is accountable for delivering, but not something it can directly control, because customer budgets, procurement timelines and market conditions sit outside its authority. The most useful leadership move is to identify the operating constraint behind the gap, such as stalled deal progression or weak qualification, before asking for more effort. Phil Hayes-St Clair’s Friday Test turns this into a weekly discipline built on three questions: what result are we responsible for, what does the evidence tell us is holding us back, and what will somebody do differently by Friday.
The need-to-know:
Separate the outcome from the inputs your team controls. Accountability stays credible when people own the actions they can change, not market conditions they can only influence.
Find the constraint before demanding more effort. A healthy pipeline with slowing deal progression usually calls for better qualification or buyer engagement, not simply more pipeline.
Use the Friday Test to turn pressure into one owned action. Agreeing one intervention with an owner, reviewable by Friday, replaces a week of explanations with evidence you can coach against.
Let’s go a little further
When the revenue target starts to look unreachable, many CEOs respond in a familiar way. They increase their attention on the number. More forecast reviews, more questions about the gap, more pressure to find revenue. It’s an understandable response. You’re responsible for the outcome, and your board expects you to know what’s happening.
The difficulty is that this pressure tends to produce explanations rather than decisions. Ask a leadership team how it will close a gap and you’ll likely hear which deals might land, why the market has softened and which opportunities may slip into next quarter. Each answer may be true. None of them tells you what anyone will do differently this week.
There’s a common belief that holding a team accountable means holding them to the number. But a revenue target is something your team is accountable for delivering, not something it can directly control. Your people can change how they qualify opportunities, which customers they pursue and how they work with partners. They can’t make a customer approve a budget by Friday. When those two kinds of movement get blended together, the forecast starts carrying the weight of the CEO’s expectations, and optimism quietly replaces insight.
The answer isn’t to swap revenue targets for activity targets either. More calls and more emails are easy to count, but activity on its own is rarely progress.
A more useful approach is to find the constraint before demanding more effort. A pipeline can look healthy in total value while deals stall after proposal. That points to a progression problem, perhaps proposals going out without a confirmed economic buyer, and it calls for a different response than a demand shortfall would.
The Friday Test gives this a weekly rhythm through three questions. What result are we responsible for? What does the evidence tell us is holding us back? What will somebody do differently by Friday? The first keeps the target honest. The second separates market conditions from execution, without letting an explanation become an excuse. The third converts pressure into a single owned action you can inspect the following Monday.
Once the constraint is clear, it’s worth checking whether your go-to-market strategy, incentives and pipeline reviews support the behaviour you need. If partner-led deals progress faster but your team is rewarded almost entirely for direct sourcing, the system is directing attention elsewhere, and more pressure on the result is unlikely to repair it.
Before your next Monday meeting, look at the number. Then decide which operating constraint you most need the team to help you understand, and aim to leave the room with one intervention, one owner and a Friday review.
So consider the number you checked this morning. Could anyone on your team move it by Friday, and if not, which conversation would you need to change?
Question for you
If your Monday meetings keep producing explanations instead of decisions, what constraint do you suspect sits underneath your number, and would it help to talk it through with Phil by email?
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