Author: Ahti Valtteri

CEO Informational Preferences Self-Check

Jul 01, 2025

The effectiveness of a CEO depends not only on professional competencies but also on conscious management of personal cognitive preferences. Many executives notice that some decisions come easily and naturally, while others require effort and tend to be postponed. Typically, this is not about a lack of knowledge or experience, but about the specifics of individual information perception and the built-in filters through which every managerial task passes.

“Blind spots” in decision-making often become a key constraint on the CEO’s growth and, as a result, the growth of the entire organization. Rapid self-diagnosis of informational preferences allows the executive to see which tasks are intuitively delegated and which are delayed due to internal cognitive discomfort. This kind of self-check is not abstract reflection, but a practical tool for managing personal effectiveness and identifying new growth zones.

Concept of Informational Preferences

Informational preferences are stable cognitive patterns that determine how an individual perceives, processes, and utilizes different types of information in management. In the professional community, this term is grounded in the theory of Information Metabolism (IM), which has been thoroughly developed in Socionics, and also overlaps with contemporary approaches to personality typologies.

Every CEO operates under constant choice: which facts to analyze more deeply, which sources to trust, when to rely on intuition, and when to draw on experience. Informational preferences determine which problem-solving style becomes default, as well as which types of managerial situations are seen as resourceful and which are perceived as burdensome or complex.

In practice, this is evident, for example, in some executives’ tendency to focus on strategic vision, others on concrete data analysis, still others on interpersonal relationships, or on detailed refinement of business processes. These preferences show up in delegation patterns: a CEO will often unconsciously “let go” of tasks that require a cognitively uncomfortable mode of thinking and focus on familiar domains.

Understanding one’s own informational preferences is the first step toward consciously managing the area of one’s highest effectiveness and systematically addressing “blind spots” through delegation and selecting complementary expertise within the team.

Blind Spots and Cognitive Discomfort

Even the most successful and experienced executives have areas of management activity that feel unattractive, exhausting, or simply “not theirs.” In terms of Information Metabolism, these are referred to as “blind spots”—aspects of perception and information processing where individual cognitive mechanisms are less effective, which often leads to a decrease in the quality or speed of decision-making.

Such “blind spots” often manifest as persistent internal resistance: tasks and projects are postponed, delegated without sufficient oversight, or decisions on them are made solely based on external circumstances rather than conscious choice. The CEO may attribute this to “workload” or “lack of priority,” yet the true cause is a specific cognitive discomfort—a mismatch between the task and the preferred thinking style.

The most common “blind spots” for CEOs generally fall into several categories:

Avoidance of detailed analysis and routine tasks, typical for types oriented toward strategic or intuitive thinking— ILE (ENTp), LIE (ENTj)
Difficulties making decisions in situations of high uncertainty and absence of structured information, characteristic of structural-logical profiles— LSI (ISTj), LSE (ESTj)
Insufficient attention to the team’s emotional climate and nonverbal signals, often observed in logical-intuitive types— SLI (ISTp), LII (INTj)
Difficulties in quickly responding to changes and letting go of established frameworks, characteristic of sensory-logical profiles— SLI (ISTp), SLE (ESTp)

Understanding one’s own “blind spots” not only helps identify the sources of cognitive discomfort but also enables the development of a more effective growth strategy, including targeted delegation and building team synergy.

Rapid Screening: How to Identify Your Informational Preferences

For quick self-diagnosis of informational preferences, a CEO completes the online assessment at personalitytest.cc. This is a compact tool built on 16 simple, situationally oriented questions. No preparation is required, and the test can be taken at any time within the work context.

After completing the assessment, the executive registers on the Opteamyzer platform and creates a personal profile. Once the profile is filled out—including the TIM result from the test and key CV data—the CEO can launch the AI-driven Personal TIM Overview. At this stage, the system identifies the TIM, maps strong and weak informational functions, and highlights both the domains where managerial decisions flow naturally and those where internal discomfort or slowing occurs.

The platform offers a “Personal TIM Overview” function—a concise analytic summary that shows:

where the CEO’s confidence zone and high decision-making speed are located,
which areas require additional support or quality delegation.

As a result, the CEO receives a ready summary analysis that can be used for immediate adjustment of management style, conscious redistribution of tasks, and further growth planning.

For teams interested in deeper integration of diagnostics into the corporate environment, there is an option to develop custom test scenarios tailored to specific cultural and industry contexts. This variant requires additional time and resources and is relevant when fine-tuning for company-specific features is needed.

CEO Growth Zone: What to Do with the Results

Screening results are neither a final assessment nor a limitation. They serve as a working map that helps visualize where managerial decisions come naturally and where there may be a loss of energy or time. CEOs typically recognize in the findings those areas where they feel confident, as well as those that habitually remain outside their personal focus.

The most valuable aspect of this process is not simply identifying strengths and weaknesses, but learning to use them consciously in the flow of daily decisions. Some areas will remain under personal control, while others can gradually be delegated to those who operate more comfortably in these informational domains. Sometimes, adjusting the structure of interactions is enough to remove unnecessary blockages and free up more energy for strategic tasks.

It is important to avoid trying to “cover” all weak zones independently. Mature engagement with the results centers on configuring the team around one’s own informational preferences. Understanding your profile allows for more precise selection of those who will strengthen you in areas that present greater difficulty. This creates an environment where the leader remains within the zone of natural decisions, and the team complements him or her in areas of internal slowing.

Screening is effective not because it changes you, but because it enables a more precise organization of work around you. This approach makes the CEO’s personal growth zone meaningful, manageable, and integrated into the company’s real processes.

Conclusion

Management at the CEO level is always a matter of balance: deciding what to keep under personal control and what to delegate to the team. Rapid screening of informational preferences makes this balance clearer. This is not about fixing oneself or searching for deficiencies—it is about configuring one’s working system to rely on strengths and skillfully navigate internal barriers.

When an executive understands which decisions are made naturally and which are postponed due to hidden cognitive discomfort, management becomes simpler. This creates room for conscious delegation, selecting key partners, and building a team that truly enhances rather than duplicates.