When I was an intern, I believed CEO was just an unnecessarily pompous position created for moneyed brats who did nothing but report late, boss people around, drink coffee, read newspapers, sign documents and go for vacations with wealth employees have sweated to bring the company. When I became Legal Officer, my image of CEOs drastically changed; as I associated more with the CEO, I observed the tremendous responsibility weighing on him.
When I often got a peek into the nature of his work, I admired it and marveled at how one person can be and have so much and yet be sane. When I became CEO, I began to loathe it after a short while, because I couldn’t be so much and still be sane!
Money. Clients. Employees. Wages. Growth. Marketing. Competition. Interests. The law…the list never ends! It is debilitating. I had to find a solution however, because, well, I run a strategy company and the last thing I want is to be entangled in thesame problems we are solving for clients. We are not old and the problems of growth are intense!
It doesn’t have to be
She was distressed. “There are just these many, many things I have to take care of and my team is not supportive. I am trying so hard. I’m trying my hand at everything, and nothing seems to be working out!” She wanted to quit as CEO, badly. That week, I had attended to four corporate leaders, either as my life coaching clients or at Stratem Consulting’s strategy & communication clients, and the problems were consistent:
- I have too much to do, it’s weighing me down
- My team isn’t catching the vision
- My team is talented, but distracted
- We’re not doing as well as we should in terms of sales.
Yes, corporate leaders have problems – personal and, well
corporate! Many of those problems are unnecessary. Very few are.
Professional balancing
The first solution is to accept that unlike other employees, you have to juggle many balls – glass balls – and that part of your job is deciding what has to fall, like God decides who has to die. In fact, CEOs are hired mainly to do what others can’t – to balance the many problems while working out solutions.
Two things about balancing are that (1) you’re only human and therefore (2) some balls have to fall. For instance: Bob is talented; he can bring a lot to the company, but he is difficult and lazy; he’s the only one in the company who can handle project A brought by client Z. Well, client Z has already given instructions which involve hard deadlines. You know that with the hard deadlines involved, Bob will violate the contract. Z is probably your biggest client. What to do?
Fire Bob and replace him? You may not have all the time to recruit; remember the deadlines!
Let Bob do the project? He’s likely to violate the contract even if you warn him. That means losing our biggest client, and a lawsuit!
Rescind the contract? You probably are in dire need of the money to offset some huge credit. Also, do you want to risk losing your biggest client?
Hire someone to work with Bob? Remember the deadlines. Plus, why are you paying Bob for being Incompetent? Why not just replace him altogether?
Assign or subcontract? Probably the best option; but big money loss for you!
The best way to avoid stress is this: Evaluate your
your options, and let fall what has to fall. After it’s fallen know that it’s part of your job. Go home contented and prepare for tomorrow.
Lessen the balls
Obviously, if you have too much to juggle, you have too much to let fall. Cut down on the stuff you don’t need or that you don’t need to handle. The strongest saboteur to leadership is unnecessary baggage; over-recruiting; too many clients; too many products; too many meetings; too many projects… Clean your plate. Look at what you have, ask, do we really need this, or do I really have to deal with this. Before taking on something new, find out whether it is necessary. The test of necessity must be strict. Our minds are designed to think according to our desires. Avoid that trap. As a corporate leader, three options will constantly come before you – what is desirable; what you want; what is necessary. Avoid the trap of the first six. The most efficient systems are lean.
Prioritize
Like the test of necessity, priority may be unpleasant, but it’s necessary. This is the advice we (Stratem Consulting) always give corporate leaders: “If you have avenues to invest in employees, marketing or product development – invest most in people; if you have to invest in only one of the three at any given time, invest in people. The next time you can invest, consider product development.” That’s a very uncomfortable position, but the truth is simple; your people are king; if you treat them well and if they catch the vision, even product development and marketing will fall into place. Let me digress a little. In the best companies, marketing and product development ideas come from staff.
Do you need a computer more than you need a printer? Do you need an extra employee before you roll out your marketing plan? Make a list of what you have to do (remember necessity) and judge what you have to do before the other.
Guide vision & ambition
Vision and ambition can be crazy horses, but don’t kill them; guide them. During one of our strategy sessions with a CEO of a certain group of companies, we identified these as the problems: spreading too thin; and handling too much
He is a visionary. He had many disruptive ideas and decided to actualize them into four companies; besides, he had always dreamed of owning a group of companies. All of them stagnated. We had to restructure the group to be lean and efficient while still in line with his vision and ambition.
Do not get to the point where you have too many things to think about and handle. We explained to him that it would have been better if, for instance, he grows one of the companies to a level and then raised another and subsequently two others to the same level and then changed management.
Growth is like gravity; an unchallengeable law. Embrace growth. It’s more strategic to grow surely than to start big and get stuck.
To the particle
Break down ‘big’ concept into small points; big assignments into small points. If, for instance, you have made a four month decision, break it down into weeks and days. That way, you can fully grasp what you have to do and weed out what you don’t have to, how to share responsibility what and how to prioritize. You’re not God, and don’t try to be. Don’t, for instance, try to grow sales by 30% in the next two years – that’s not an activity but a goal; it’s not something you do, it’s something you achieve. What you have to do is a breakdown of that 30% and those two years. For instance, reaching 100 clients in the next two days; then another 50 in the next three days. That’s something you can sit down with the sales team and plan how to do. What project or assignment is bothering you? Break it down.
