David Santineer works with senior leaders on leadership bandwidth: how CFOs, COOs and their teams can widen their attention, make decisions with greater independence, and spot risks before they become crises.
They are most useful for making leadership bandwidth concrete for CFOs, COOs and their teams.
Best for
A leadership development consultancy commissioning webinars or articles on executive bandwidth for CFOs and COOs.
Not for
A finance software vendor wanting product demos, conversion tutorials or named customer ROI case studies.
Key takeaways
Leadership bandwidth is a scarce resource.
Doing your own role well may not give the organisation a wide enough view.
Control is not the same as a team's ability to act.
Check first: Confirm audience roles and seniority, the Part 2 article, transcripts, webinar history and engagement data.
Main ideas
Leadership bandwidth is a scarce resource · Doing your own role well may not give the organisation a wide enough view · Control is not the same as a team’s ability to act
David Santineer writes about leadership bandwidth: the attention and decision-making capacity leaders have to spot risks, set direction and act.
In three LinkedIn posts, they apply the idea to CFOs, COOs and their teams, arguing that capable leaders can still miss important risks when attention stays too narrowly within their own roles.
Their posts offer practical questions and examples for readers interested in executive decision-making and organisational blind spots.
Santineer makes the abstract problem of limited leadership attention concrete.
They contrast control with bandwidth, asking whether a team can make a defensible decision under uncertainty without checking with the leader.
They illustrate the cost of a narrow field of view with a project that reaches 80% completion but misses its intended benefits, a commercial risk flagged weeks before it becomes public, and a stakeholder concern dismissed until it contributes to a crisis.
These examples connect delegation and attention to risks and results, which may interest senior finance and operations readers.
The posts point to a longer article about a composite case; ask for the article if it would inform a buying decision.
Santineer’s central idea is “leadership bandwidth”: leaders’ limited capacity to notice risks and opportunities, make decisions and coordinate action.
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They argue that adding budget or people does not necessarily widen that capacity. Their practical challenge is to help a leadership team see beyond its own functions and make sound decisions without routing every choice back to the top.
Leadership bandwidth is a scarce resource
Santineer defines bandwidth as the cognitive, emotional and decision-making capacity leaders have for direction, prioritisation and coordination.
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They argue that limited attention—not just money or headcount—can cap what an organisation sees and acts on. They cite survey figures they describe as more than a decade old, alongside their experience working with senior leaders.
One post says 97% of senior leaders surveyed considered being strategic their most important activity, while 96% said they lacked time for it. Santineer asks readers to consider where their leadership team’s attention goes in a typical week.
Doing your own role well may not give the organisation a wide enough view
Santineer argues that functional focus can leave gaps: a CFO may concentrate on financial issues and a COO on operations, while risks or opportunities beyond those views go unnoticed.
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They present bandwidth as an organisational blind spot, not simply an individual performance problem.
They describe a project that was 80% complete but still missed its intended benefits and return on investment, a commercial risk flagged weeks before it became a headline, and a stakeholder concern dismissed as noise before it contributed to a crisis. Santineer says they have seen these examples; ask for the organisations involved if that context matters to your decision.
Control is not the same as a team’s ability to act
Santineer’s test for whether leadership capacity extends beyond one person is whether the team can make a defensible decision under uncertainty without checking with the leader first.
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If decisions keep flowing back to that person, their working hours limit the organisation’s capacity. They propose building proactive judgement in the team rather than adding dashboards or simply working harder.
They ask CFOs whether their teams could make a defensible judgement call on their behalf, under uncertainty, without checking in first. They say the discomfort of asking is useful because it exposes the difference between control and wider decision-making capacity.
Answers the first question a newcomer might have: what does Santineer mean by ‘leadership bandwidth’?
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This post defines the term, so the others read as applications rather than isolated remarks.
Santineer opens with two survey figures: 97% of senior leaders say being strategic is the most important thing they do, and 96% say they don’t have the time.
They note that the surveys are more than a decade old and say the gap looks wider, not narrower, across three decades of working with senior leaders.
The resource problem, in this account, is not money but attention.
Leadership bandwidth is the finite cognitive, emotional and decision-making capacity of the people responsible for direction, prioritisation and coordination.
Budgets can be topped up with a supplementary request and headcount can be added, but bandwidth sets a hard ceiling on how much of the risk and opportunity landscape a leadership team can see and act on.
Whatever falls outside that ceiling still shows up in results, usually late.
The post asks where a leadership team’s attention goes in a typical week and points readers to a ‘12 Bear Secrets’ discovery call.
For brands planning a campaign
The 97/96 framing and bandwidth definition are the clearest material for a webinar opener or contributed article: they give finance and operations audiences a name for a problem they already feel. The post describes the underlying surveys as more than a decade old, so source newer figures or present these numbers as a long-standing pattern, not current data.
Answers ‘why does a well-run organisation still get blindsided?’ and shows what the bandwidth gap costs through three recognisable failure scenarios.
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Santineer splits leadership attention by role: a CFO’s bandwidth goes to financial issues, a COO’s to operational ones.
Everyone is doing their job well, yet the organisation still gets blindsided, because ‘well’ is not the same as ‘wide enough’.
The post names concrete costs: a project that was 80% delivered but failed to achieve its target benefits and ROI; a commercial risk flagged in someone’s inbox three weeks before it became a headline; an outlier stakeholder whose concerns were filed as noise until they became the root of a crisis.
They note that such organisations had capital, talent and a rigorous strategy, and argue that the difference between success and failure is rarely capability—at root cause, it is often leadership bandwidth.
The post invites organisations whose results aren’t landing to explore why, with a link to a discovery call.
For brands planning a campaign
The three failure examples are the most reusable material in this set.
They give a partnership piece concrete, recognisable scenarios for practical guidance—for example, walking a finance and operations audience through each one and asking which their own reporting would surface in time.
The CFO-versus-COO framing also suggests a co-presenter format: one session for both audiences rather than just one role.
Answers ‘what does bandwidth look like in practice?’ with a single test question readers can apply to their own teams immediately, making it the most portable idea in the set.
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Santineer states the rule directly: control is not bandwidth.
The test is a question for CFOs: could their team make a defensible judgement call on their behalf, under uncertainty, without checking in first?
If the answer isn’t clear, those decisions funnel back through the leader, and leadership bandwidth is capped at that person’s own working hours.
They acknowledge that this is an uncomfortable question for finance or operations leaders who pride themselves on control and predictability, and say the discomfort is the point.
Mistaking control for bandwidth, in this account, is how well-run organisations still get blindsided by risks that were visible in hindsight.
The remedy is not working harder or hiring more people to watch more dashboards, but deliberately building proactive capability in the people around you so the organisation’s field of view isn’t limited to what a few leaders can personally track.
The post previews Part 2 of an article, which will walk through a composite case where this gap nearly took down expensive, high-stakes programmes and what it took in judgement and courage to turn them around.
For brands planning a campaign
This is the post to build an interactive segment around.
Its check-in test works as a live diagnostic question in a webinar, and the sequence—pose the question, surface the discomfort, then move to capability-building—offers a ready-made structure for a joint session.
The referenced Part 2 article isn’t among these posts; ask for it and the promised composite case before building a collaboration around that story.
Short, argument-first posts ending with a call to action3
An audience of senior finance and operations leaders3
Leadership bandwidth as the organising idea1
Control is not the same as bandwidth1
“Well” is not the same as “wide enough”1
Leadership bandwidth as the organising idea
Santineer’s central subject is leadership bandwidth: the finite cognitive, emotional and decision-making capacity of the people responsible for direction, prioritisation and coordination.
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They argue that it—not money—is the scarce resource, setting a hard ceiling on how much of an organisation’s risk and opportunity landscape its leaders can see and act on.
In one post, they pair a decade-old survey finding—97% of senior leaders call being strategic their most important activity; 96% say they lack the time—with their observation that the gap has widened rather than closed across three decades of work with senior leaders.
Bandwidth, they write, cannot be topped up with a supplementary budget request or solved by hiring more people.
Names a concept, defines it against familiar constraints, and backs it with survey figures and stated firsthand experience.
For brands planning a campaign
A leadership development provider can build a webinar or contributed article around this framing: open with the definition, contrast bandwidth with budget and headcount, then give finance and operations leaders a diagnostic to run with their own leadership team. The audience gets a named concept they can reuse internally, making it more portable than a generic talk on strategy time.
A second recurring argument separates control from capacity.
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Santineer’s test is whether a team could make a defensible judgement call on the leader’s behalf, under uncertainty, without checking in first.
If not, decisions funnel back through the leader, capping leadership bandwidth at one person’s working hours.
They frame the discomfort of that question as the point, addressing finance and operations leaders who pride themselves on control and predictability.
Expanding bandwidth, they argue, means deliberately building proactive capability in the people around you—not hiring more people to watch more dashboards.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful as the spine of a workshop or tool on delegated decision-making.
The question of whether someone can make a defensible judgement call under uncertainty, without checking in, works as a live exercise.
The argument that well-run organisations still get blindsided gives the session a concrete failure mode to work back from.
Santineer argues that each function’s attention is correctly allocated—a CFO’s to financial issues, a COO’s to operational ones—yet an organisation can still be blindsided: doing your job well is not the same as covering enough ground.
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They describe three costs they have seen: a project 80% delivered that still failed to hit its target benefits and ROI; a commercial risk flagged in someone’s inbox three weeks before it became a headline; and a stakeholder’s concerns filed as noise until they became the root of a crisis. The organisations involved had capital, talent and a rigorous strategy.
Composite, anonymised examples illustrate a pattern rather than name a client.
The examples are presented as Santineer’s own observations, but no client, sector or date is attached. Ask for details that can be verified before presenting them as cases.
For brands planning a campaign
Strong material for a cross-functional risk piece or interview segment.
The three consequences are specific enough to open an article, and the “well versus wide enough” line offers a ready-made title.
A partner could ask Santineer to turn one failure pattern into a checklist for leadership teams.
Short, argument-first posts ending with a call to action
The three posts share a template: a titled hook, a paradox or provocative question, a short framework, concrete consequences, and a closing invitation to book a “12 Bear Secrets” discovery call.
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They use #12BearSecrets alongside role hashtags such as #CFO, #COO, #FinanceLeadership and #Transformation. One post is labelled Part 2 of an article and promises a composite case, placing the social posts alongside longer articles on the same themes.
Recurring post template and numbered article series
The underlying article is not included here. Ask to review it before assessing its length, structure or depth.
For brands planning a campaign
Sponsored output needs to fit an argument-first format: short and ending with a direct call to action.
A partner seeking a case study or product-led piece will need to adapt to that shape or negotiate a different format.
The article series suggests appetite and capacity for longer-form collaboration, not just social posts.
An audience of senior finance and operations leaders
Santineer writes directly to CFOs, COOs, and finance and operations leaders, using their vocabulary: control, predictability, programme benefits and ROI, commercial risk, transformation, and stakeholder management.
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Their recurring claim is that these leaders are competent but bounded: attention and field of view, not ability, are the constraint. They address readers as people already running a function, not aspiring leaders.
For brands planning a campaign
A leadership development provider gets an already-segmented senior finance and operations audience and a thesis that flatters no one.
The practical hook is a session on widening the leadership team’s collective field of view, not individual skills training.
The posts’ call-to-action habit also means webinars or articles should end with a clear next step rather than a soft close.
David Santineer's LinkedIn posts all point readers to a "12 Bear Secrets discovery call", and each carries the hashtag #12BearSecrets.
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They present the call as their own offer of a conversation about leadership bandwidth, but do not say whether they own the business, work for it, or contract to it; marketers should ask about the relationship.
12 Bear Secrets
Disclosed partnership
Santineer closes each post with an invitation to book a "12 Bear Secrets discovery call" and tags the posts #12BearSecrets, tying the offer to their leadership-bandwidth argument.
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The posts do not say whether they own the programme, work for it, or work with it as a client or partner; marketers should ask about the relationship.
David Santineer writes short, argument-first LinkedIn posts about a single organising idea they call leadership bandwidth: the finite attention, judgement and decision-making capacity of the people responsible for direction, prioritisation and coordination.
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Their argument is that money and headcount do not widen that capacity, and that organisations with capital, talent and a rigorous strategy can still be blindsided by what falls outside their leaders' field of view.
To explore the work, start with the post that pairs the survey figures (97% of senior leaders call being strategic their most important activity; 96% say they lack the time) with their observation that the gap has widened, then read the follow-ups on why a CFO's bandwidth and a COO's bandwidth can each be well used while the organisation's view stays too narrow, and on the test question of whether a team could make a defensible judgement call under uncertainty without checking in first.
The posts follow a consistent shape - titled hook, paradox or question, short framework, concrete consequences, closing invitation to book a discovery call - and one is labelled Part 2 of a longer article series, so the social posts sit alongside longer-form writing on the same themes.
Shcherbakova writes for the same senior finance audience and reaches a comparable conclusion from the opposite direction: finance is operating in permanent change, and the limit is how much change an organisation can sustainably absorb rather than how much it can launch.
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Both treat capacity, not capability or budget, as the binding constraint, and use a numbered-points structure to make the case.
Shcherbakova's subject is the finance function's own transformation load - AI, automation, ESG reporting, shared services, data governance - and the fatigue that follows.
Santineer's frame sits one level up, with leadership attention, decision rights and how far a leadership team's view extends across functions.
A reader following Shcherbakova gets finance-function change management; one following Santineer gets executive bandwidth and delegated judgement.
Redfern challenges the same kind of well-run but inward-looking practice.
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Her argument that executive buyers are not in the seller's sales cycle but in their own buying cycle is a close cousin of Santineer's point that a function can do its job well and still leave the organisation blind to what matters outside it. Both also work through a fractional or advisory offer, with a discovery conversation as the entry point.
Redfern's material is revenue enablement and commercial capability: fractional enablement leadership, coaching, onboarding and ramp programmes, sales methodology rollouts, and quantified outcomes such as conversion and retention uplifts.
Santineer stays with the leadership team and the limits of attention and judgement, without a sales-process or capability-building offer of that kind.
Readers choosing between them are choosing between enablement redesign and executive-level decision design.
Presicci makes a structurally similar argument about function-by-function excellence: each team can execute its own part reasonably well while the end-to-end process performs badly, because ownership is hard to see once work crosses a functional boundary.
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Like Santineer, Presicci recommends looking through two lenses at once and making the work visible before deciding who or what should do it. Both also write framework-first posts that end with a downloadable resource or a webinar invitation.
Presicci's lenses are the functional structure and the end-to-end GTM process, and the payoff is a competency model and task-level decisions about which work stays human and which can be handled by an AI agent.
Santineer's lens is executive bandwidth and what a leadership team can personally see and act on.
Presicci fits a revenue operations or sales leadership reader; Santineer fits a CFO, COO or general management reader.
The posts speak directly to CFOs, COOs and senior leaders about leadership bandwidth, strategic attention and risks that go unnoticed.
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That makes David Santineer’s content relevant to campaigns targeting those roles. For campaigns requiring verified finance or operations professionals, ask for recent audience survey results or another documented source showing respondents’ roles and seniority.
The posts contain no sponsorship programme, media kit or partner policy.
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All three end with the same call to action — a booking link for a "12 Bear Secrets discovery call" — pointing to David Santineer's own advisory work on leadership bandwidth, not an advertising or sponsorship offer.
They are written for a senior audience: CFOs, COOs and other leaders responsible for direction and prioritisation.
For a brand, a collaboration would therefore mean commissioning work — a webinar, contributed article or similar arrangement built around the leadership bandwidth framework — rather than buying published inventory.
Before planning, ask for scope, timing, fees, deliverable specifications, audience data and approval steps; none are published.
Strong fit for an expert-contributor or co-created thought-leadership role.
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Brief
A leadership development consultancy wants to assess David Santineer as an expert contributor on executive bandwidth and strategic decision-making for CFOs and COOs, and propose a webinar or article collaboration that turns the leadership bandwidth framework into practical guidance.
Reasons
The posts address CFOs, COOs, finance leaders and operations leaders directly, using their vocabulary: control, predictability, programme benefits, ROI, commercial risk, transformation and stakeholder management.
David Santineer offers a named, repeatable framework. Leadership bandwidth is the finite cognitive, emotional and decision-making capacity of the people responsible for direction, prioritisation and coordination. That gives a consultancy a concept to build a webinar, article or diagnostic around.
The posts offer a portable diagnostic question: could your team make a defensible judgement call on your behalf, under uncertainty, without checking in first? It works as a live exercise for a senior audience.
The posts use concrete failure scenarios: a project 80% delivered that still missed target benefits and ROI; a commercial risk flagged in an inbox three weeks before it became a headline; and a stakeholder whose concerns were filed as noise until they became the root of a crisis. Those scenarios offer practical campaign content to work back from.
The short, argument-first format and recurring call to action suggest David Santineer is comfortable writing for a senior audience and ending with a clear next step—well suited to webinar or contributed-article work.
The reference to a Part 2 article shows an appetite for longer-form work, although the article itself does not appear in the posts here.
Limits
Ask for documented audience demographics before claiming a verified CFO or COO following.
No client names, sectors or dates accompany the examples; describe them as David Santineer’s illustrations, not independently verified cases.
Ask for the referenced Part 2 article, transcripts, webinar history and engagement data before making a decision.
When to choose a specialist
Poor fit for that brief.
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Brief
A finance software vendor wants a creator to produce product-led demo videos, conversion-focused tutorials and named customer case studies showing users operating its FP&A platform and achieving measurable ROI.
Reasons
The posts are conceptual and argument-led. They explain a leadership problem and propose a way of thinking; they do not demonstrate software, walk through a product interface or teach a platform process.
The posts name no clients, provide no verified implementation stories, and include no product screenshots or step-by-step software tutorials. The three failure examples are composite or anonymised illustrations, not documented customer outcomes.
The posts show a booking link for a 12 Bear Secrets discovery call pointing to the creator’s advisory work, not a media kit, rate card or product-inventory offer. A campaign to generate product-led demo bookings would require a different scope, deliverable specification and written agreement.
The only quantitative material is a pair of survey figures described as over a decade old. They can frame a long-standing pattern, but are not current product performance data or ROI evidence for a software vendor.
The posts end with a direct call to action rather than a soft close. A vendor seeking product-led conversion content would need to adapt to that format or negotiate a different one.
Limits
This is a poor fit for the specific product-demo and named-case-study brief, not a finding that David Santineer would never take on a sponsored or commissioned software project.
A different brief from the same vendor—such as a contributed article on why finance teams get blindsided by risks outside their field of view—could better match the reviewed strengths.
A worked campaign example
Angle
Title: 'Wide Enough: why a well-run finance and operations team can still get blindsided.' The promise is practical: help senior leaders widen the leadership team's field of view without adding headcount or another dashboard.
Brief
Leadership development consultancy webinar and article collaboration for CFOs and COOs.
Format
45-minute live webinar, followed by a 1,200 to 1,500 word contributed article and a one-page pre-meeting worksheet.
Gaps to resolve before planning
The referenced Part 2 article does not appear here. Read it before relying on the composite case it promises.
Ask for documented audience demographics and engagement metrics before claiming verified CFO or COO reach.
No client cases, sectors or dates accompany the failure examples. Label them as David Santineer's illustrations, not verified case studies.
No media kit, pricing or partnership terms are published. Agree scope, timing, fees and approval steps directly and in writing before planning.
Handoff
A one-page worksheet titled 'Where does your leadership team's attention actually go?' with three prompts: list the decisions that currently funnel back to you; mark which risks or opportunities sit outside the leadership team's field of view; and name one decision a team member could make under uncertainty without checking in. The contributed article should carry the same argument in written form and link to the worksheet and consultancy enquiry route.
Structure
Open with the 97/96 gap: 97% of senior leaders say being strategic is their most important activity, while 96% say they do not have time. Present the figures explicitly as a long-standing pattern, not current survey data, and ask attendees whether the gap has widened or closed in their own organisation.
Define leadership bandwidth in plain terms: the finite cognitive, emotional and decision-making capacity of the people responsible for direction, prioritisation and coordination. Contrast it with budget, which can be topped up, and headcount, which can be hired. Bandwidth sets a hard ceiling on what the leadership team can see and act on. Whatever sits outside that ceiling still turns up in results, usually late.
Run the check-in test live: could your team make a defensible judgement call on your behalf, under uncertainty, without checking in with you first? If the answer is unclear, decisions funnel back through the leader, capping bandwidth at that person's working hours. Ask attendees to note one decision that currently funnels back to them.
Use the three failure scenarios as short cases: the project 80% delivered that still missed target benefits and ROI; the commercial risk flagged in someone's inbox three weeks before it became a headline; and the outlier stakeholder filed as noise until they became the root of a crisis. For each, ask which part of the organisation's reporting would have surfaced it in time.
Close with the core distinction: control is not bandwidth, and well is not the same as wide enough. The remedy is not working harder or hiring more people to watch more dashboards, but deliberately building proactive capability into the people around you.
End with a clear next step, in keeping with the format of the posts: offer the worksheet as a takeaway and invite attendees to a discovery conversation with the consultancy.
Why it works
It uses David Santineer's existing framework and language rather than asking for a generic leadership talk.
It gives finance and operations leaders a named problem they can reuse internally: leadership bandwidth.
It turns the check-in test into a live diagnostic, so the audience leaves with a question they can apply to their own team immediately.
It uses the three concrete failure scenarios to make the argument practical and decision-oriented.
It fits the argument-first, short-form style of the posts and ends with a direct call to action.
Consider Victoria Shcherbakova if the consultancy wants the same senior-leadership campaign aimed more specifically at the future finance function: sustaining change across AI, automation, data governance and other transformation pressures.
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In Victoria’s post, the central question is how much change finance teams can absorb without exhausting people. That gives a webinar or article a clearer finance-transformation and change-capacity focus than David Santineer’s leadership-bandwidth framing.
The post offers a broad view of transformation fatigue and sustainable change, but does not provide David Santineer’s specific test of whether a team can make a defensible decision without escalating it to its leader.
Consider Kate Redfern if the campaign instead focuses on improving sales conversations with executive buyers rather than executive bandwidth for CFOs and COOs.
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Her post argues that sellers should help buyers make sense of complexity and reach decisions, rather than follow a seller-centered discovery checklist. That could support a practical campaign for sales leaders on buyer relevance and decision facilitation.
This is a different buyer problem: sales conversations and revenue enablement, not leadership attention, strategic decisions or finance and operations risk.
Her other post describes a broad revenue-enablement offer.
Ask for evidence that her audience includes CFOs or COOs before considering her for the proposed campaign.
Consider Federico Presicci if the consultancy wants to address how commercial outcomes depend on work crossing functions.
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His post recommends mapping a small number of end-to-end go-to-market processes, naming owners and making hand-offs and measures visible. That offers a more operational campaign angle for organizations trying to improve coordination across sales, marketing, revenue operations and customer success.
The emphasis is on process design and cross-functional execution, including where AI agents might perform tasks, rather than on the finite attention and decision-making capacity of CFOs and COOs. Santineer’s other post focuses on their sales-leadership capabilities, so this option moves the campaign toward go-to-market leadership rather than finance and operations.
This page draws on three full LinkedIn posts by David Santineer, from an account observed on 11 October 2026.
The posts define leadership bandwidth, contrast it with control, and set out consequences of a leadership team whose view stays too narrow: a project 80% delivered that still missed its target benefits and return on investment, a commercial risk flagged in an inbox weeks before it became a headline, and a stakeholder concern dismissed as noise until it contributed to a crisis.
Two posts close with an invitation to book a 12 Bear Secrets discovery call and all three carry the #12BearSecrets hashtag.
The 97% and 96% figures in one post are survey results Santineer describes as more than a decade old, so they are presented as a long-standing pattern rather than current data.
Similar-creator comparisons use two posts each from Victoria Shcherbakova, Kate Redfern and Federico Presicci.
Not in the posts: publication dates for the individual posts, the Part 2 article one post promises, transcripts, engagement data, audience demographics, named client cases, and any earlier signature work such as a book, show or business.
