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Some CEOs see themselves as "people who create ideas and start-ups", or "CEOs in charge" or even "CEOs of the company", and this variety in the way the role is perceived reflects the fact that this job is very different different points of the evolution of a company. Those who appreciate a particular stage of the trip tend to specialize.
However, many of us strive to do everything – from the beginning with a white board and co-founders until the third or fourth quarter as a public company. I want to focus here on this last category.
It is difficult to adapt the role of CEO as companies move through different stages of growth. Below is a list of the most frequently asked questions by the CEOs of my company's portfolio companies. My answers are based both on my own experiences as CEO and on my observations as a board member working closely with other CEOs.
1. How does my role as CEO evolve as the company grows?
It changes in every way. The nature of your objective (product design, market suitability, evolution, strategic development) as well as the type of skills you need to acquire these focal points (product creativity, business execution, organizational planning, strategy, financial engineering) change constantly. .
My key tip here is to accept this. Each step of your business will require a different approach and purpose. You must agree with this and regularly review the status of your business and find out if you are doing the right things for the current phase. What made you successful last year may not help you next year, or worse, can hurt you. Being aware of this is the only way to avoid the trap.
The key to understanding the progressive nature of work is finding the time to badyze yourself. I had used to do it through an external personal website twice a year, when I was cleaning up my schedule and adding a day to a trip from home. existing business, somewhere far from the rest of the team. I would advise any CEO to do the same. You spend your day badyzing top-level reports on business performance over the last six months (income statement, engineering / product reports, customer updates) and blueprints. for the next six months (roadmaps, strategic views of competition movements, budget and forecasts). Then, for each major activity element to reach (reach the target number x, deliver the product there on a given date, etc.), determine how that will happen and how you will help.
If you find yourself unable to answer any of these questions, you have evolved too quickly: it is time to go back a little further. If your answers show that you are a bottleneck, you have not evolved enough – it's time to hire a new one to take care of some of what you've done.
Many early-stage CEOs make the mistake of spending too early, and many late-stage CEOs make a mistake too late.
As a company embarks on the journey from the founding phase to Series A and Series B, a great CEO will always listen to the company. You will be perfectly aware of how products and technology, sales and marketing, organization and human resources, finance, law, etc. think and what they do.
Of course, you will have experts in each area who will take care of the details but, if necessary, you can go there with a minimum of friction and understand the details. If you surrender these areas of responsibility too early, your business could unexpectedly develop at an early stage, which could put you on unhealthy trajectories. For example, if you give full legal control to a Series A General Counsel, you could create an organization that is too conservative. If you entrust all products to a hired product manager prior to Series A, you may miss a crucial development of the external environment that makes your business a plateau.
On the other hand, having spent the first few years being a control freak, starting with the B / C series and afterwards, it is crucial to call on experts who provide books that can be read quickly. This is especially true in areas of interest to many executives – two clbadic cases: engineering and products, and sales and marketing – and it is important to be able to give it up. Devote all your energy to recruit the best people to replace you in these roles.
My two-year off-site staff allowed me to capture these moments of oversizing or under-sizing fairly quickly and to come back if necessary. Make sure you have a mechanism of this type to proactively think about your current situation.
2. How to establish a solid working relationship with my management team?
Building an excellent relationship with the team you work with every day is key.
Most CEOs are aware of the manual aspects of management: organize regular (that is, weekly) team meetings; make sure everyone has the opportunity to speak and represent their efforts; to ensure that there is a balance between young and old, men and women, technical and commercial; have clear actions and follow-ups; and make sure your team members have personal development pathways so that they grow individually while developing the business.
What is often missing is the memory that your team is also composed of people. Take the time to get to know them and what's important to them – whether it's family, hobbies, or any other part of their lives – and make sure you create and manage opportunities so you can all hang out together to enable these relationships to grow and prosper. .
You do not need everyone to be better friends, but having a team that really loves, respects and cares about others makes all the difference.
3. How much autonomy do I have to give to my team?
There is no single answer to this question. You do not want to micro-manage, but you do not want to go wrong. The autonomy you give depends both on the quality of your team and the stage of your business. Basically, in the beginning, a little micro-management is a good thing. At this point, you are likely to maintain very good relationships with your team, who will probably not be much more experienced than you. Therefore, your "interference" will probably be appreciated.
As society develops (especially after the B / C series), it is crucial to call on experts who have already performed similar tasks. As you bring these people, be very involved with them in the first month or two months (mainly to make sure you have hired the right person). Do not settle for an open door policy, but actively monitor how they settle, what they do, what their observations are. Over time, let them take flight.
One of the benefits of CEO function at a very advanced stage or post-IPO is that you learn a lot more from others than the reverse.
4. How can I deal with a long-standing executive who is underperforming?
Dealing with a star who erases it is a common problem in startups. This occurs for two reasons: either a situation or an external factor has limited their ability to perform (temporarily or permanently), or their role has simply overwhelmed them.
Most CEOs can diagnose the previous problem. If someone is experiencing a traumatic event such as a divorce or an illness, you will probably know it and your job is to find out if it is possible to fix it (in this case, I find that loyalty and l & # 39; 39, badistance is repaid several times). or not (in this case, it is essential to find the right solution for the individual and for the company).
Where many new CEOs fail is in this last scenario. It is important to realize that there are many great people who simply do not have the scale. The sales manager who reported you $ 10 million might not be able to make between $ 10 and $ 50 million. The engineering product manager who created the v1 might not be able to design a portfolio of thousands of product features in the v5, etc. Do not worry and if this happens, act quickly. Find the right role for the current person, hire or promote the person who can grow with the company and move on.
Wanting to force someone to happen outside of one's radius of action is difficult for him and devalues the company. Always do what is right on the part of the person leaving. They have done great work for a while and without them you may never have reached the point where they could not evolve anymore. Celebrating this and making sure they have the right home is the key to your karma, but also a balanced team dynamic.
5. What are the main indicators of my underperformance?
For me, the best early indicator of the quality of my work was the momentum and mood of people who surrounded me.
Most CEOs who raise a successful Series A will have had a period when things would really feel good. Customers were excited about the product, the team was working hard to get great results, investors were involved and helped.
Develop an internal thermometer indicating how you feel and measure the current temperature in relation to it. If you feel a loss of energy, general discord or dissatisfaction, something is wrong somewhere – hunt down and fix it.
If you wait for real failure indicators (laughable product launches, lost revenue, etc.), it is almost always too late.
6. What is the heart of the role of CEO?
It's a role that keeps changing. While many careers progress linearly over time, the role of CEO can change dramatically from one stage to the next.
The only constant in the role of CEO is that of change. The big CEOs are comfortable with this reality and are managing it with strategies that allow them to track their progress and move up a gear when the time is right.
There is also, of course, the biggest speed change of all: recognize when it's time, in fact, to completely stop being CEO. While many of my company's portfolio CEOs did not do this and ran their businesses from the foundation to the closure, my partner Bernard and I eventually left the position to take on executive chair positions.
The change is constant. The big CEOs accept it rather than fear it.
Suranga Chandratillake is a partner of Balderton Capital. He was previously founder and CEO of Blinkbox.
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