Being a CEO of an established company with 10, 20, 50, or 100 employees means you are constantly encouraging others. As CEO you have to take responsibility for Vision and Strategy, including where your biggest markets are going to be. In an established company your role is primary focused on making the people who report to you and all the rest of the employees in your company successful.
Summary
- Set the 3-5 year vision and strategy for the company.
- Understand your markets, where they are going, and where your customers are telling you they need to go.
- Make each of your first reports successful.
- Find the critical KPIs that drive the success of your business and help each of your first reports own and improve the most critical KPI for their department.
- Keep people accountable.
As an entrepreneur, coach, and facilitator I know how difficult it can be to have the CEO role.
If you struggle with any of these aspects of the CEO role, Contact Me or call me at +1 (604) 721-5732. Let’s have a conversation to help you be the best CEO you can be.
Audio
Transcript
What’s the role of an established CEO?
Hi Everyone. I’m Coach David J. Greer.
I want to talk to you if you are a CEO of a company that’s grown to 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 employees. Whether you got to that role by being an owner/founder who grew a really successful company, or you got to that role through a series of careers choices that you have made and eventually you’ve ended up in the CEO role; either way I want to talk to you about what it is that you do once companies get to be that bigger size.
I remember when I bought out Annabelle Green in Robelle and suddenly I became President and co-owner with CEO Bob Green. Suddenly I had a lot more people to look after, a lot more responsibilities, two of the four significant departments in the company that I was now responsible for. It was really a step change in my career.
We were co-owners of the company. I’m talking to you as CEO so that you are the single leader of the company. In that case the single most important job that you have is the vision and strategy of the company. Where is the company going in 3-years, 4-years, 5-years? What are the key things that have to happen this year?
For strategy, I think strategy really equals your markets. What markets are you going after? How fast are they growing? What are the products and services that you have to satisfy the pain points in those markets? In order to stay up to date and knowledgeable about that, I believe as CEO you have got to be close to the customers and hearing what they are saying about your products and services. Also, about where they see their company and themselves going in the future.
By the time you get to dozens, hundreds of employees, you will have a number of first reports. You want to make sure that they fill in any weaknesses that you have. I all too often see CEOs, especially owner/founders, who grew their company not willing to admit that they have weak areas. If you have some weak areas, you want to make sure that you have back filled those with some really strong people.
You’ll have a senior leadership team. Your principal job with your senior leadership team is pretty easy. Your job is to make them successful. To make them successful, you have to help them be really clear on their areas of responsibility, what their goals are. You need to be able to set for the company and for each department what are the key productivity indicators that are going to make you and the company successful? Figuring that out, helping each team lead to get better at their critical KPI, there are many KPIs it is finding the ones that are the most important, that have the biggest leverage, is your role.
I found that as a CEO and leader and a coach and a facilitator, I’ve had to really grow my listening skills. Being able to listen without judgement, I believe, is critical in the CEO role so that you can really hear what is going on. Not just overlaying it with your judgement.
For each team lead, you need to keep them accountable and to help them keep the people who report to them accountable. As I know as someone who doesn’t really like conflict, I have had to get much better at being comfortable with conflict. To make sure that people who report to me are accountable. When they say that A, B, and C is going to get done on a certain date, then gosh darn it better get done on that date. People have a lot of excuses, but you need to listen and get through the excuses and find out really what is going on. Are they not capable? Do they not have the skills? Did you not give them the resources? Really dig down—what was the root cause of that? Ultimately, if people cannot be accountable over time you need to let them go and find some better place, so that you can find someone better who will be accountable.
That’s my list of things that CEO of established companies need to be able to do. Set the vision and strategy. Know their markets. Stay close to customers. Make each of your first reports hugely successful. Understand the critical KPIs that drive your business. Make sure that your first reports have responsibility for at least one critical KPI. Finally, keeping people accountable.
The best way I heard CEO described is Constantly Encouraging Others. I hope that you can encourage someone today. If your day is looking a bit like mine is which is darn rainy and grey, that’s what it is feeling like for you in the CEO role right now, then reach out. I really know what that’s like as an entrepreneur, as a coach, as a facilitator. Give me a call. Send me an email. Let’s setup a time to talk. I’m sure that I can shed some light on how you can grow into the next better, best CEO that you want to be.
