Leadership Development

Six Roles of the CEO

Georganne November 12, 2020

1. CEO as The Coach

The entire Company is made up of a series of teams who are the players who actually sell, make, deliver, and service the product. Management coaches the teams; and the CEO coaches the coaches.

How to be a Better Coach:

Set Meaningful Goals. Develop initiatives to make the goals achievable and that drive revenue and productivity.
Communicate & Build Trust. Use team meetings, “rap’ sessions, brainstorming, and one-to-ones. Make sure people understand what is expected of them.
- Use key performance indicators and metrics to measure how the company and team members are performing. Use daily, weekly, monthly and year to date key indicators to keep on track.
- Give feedback on results.
- Provide actionable data on customers & prospects, productivity, and what’s working, and what’s not.
Have a Business Plan and Anticipate the Future. It will help you capitalize on opportunities, protect against threats, recognize problems, and take corrective action on a timely basis.
- Develop an operating budget and track performance against it.
- Set priorities.
- Create action plans.
Put the Right People in the Right Seats on the Bus
- Always be on the lookout for talent, whether you have a job open or not.
- Formalize your hiring process.
- Make sure each member of your team understands what is expected of them, how their job fits into the success of the company and has quantifiable goals against which you can measure performance.
- Take time to conduct performance reviews, and do it no less than on an annual basis; it is worth the effort.
- Don’t tolerate sub-par performance. Provide feedback to under-performing employees and help them with a plan and timetable to get back on track. Make the difficult staffing decisions, and don’t procrastinate replacing consistent under-performers.
- Organize yourself and others to do the job, determine what resources are needed, and do your best to provide them, and when you can’t show and inspire others how to perform with limited resources.
- Celebrate successes and give recognition and rewards.
- Take the time to show them you care.

2. CEO as The Student

Never stop learning and bringing resources back to the company. Stretch outside your comfort zone by trying out what you learn.

3. CEO as The Innovator

Keep an open mind to new markets, channels, customers, products, concepts, processes, strategies, pricing models, ways to overcome competitors.

4. CEO as The Strategist

Set the direction in which you want the company to go in order to create and articulate the Company’s vision, identify, and the challenges that need to be overcome.

Set standards that must be met, choose the best points of leverage to drive results.
Build on strengths and reduce weaknesses.

5. CEO as The Ambassador

Be the company’s Evangelist who is constantly promoting the company externally.

Serve as a role model within the company (It’s happening anyway…)

6. CEO as The Investor

Know the Company’s numbers. You don’t have to be an accountant to understand how to use your financial statements and financial reports as a valuable tool.

Understand WHAT you can learn and HOW you can benefit from reviewing the Balance Sheet and P&L statement.
Take time to review your financial statements each month. Compare your financial results for the month and year-to-date versus your plan/operating budget and last year’s results.
Know how to use your trailing 12 months numbers, and the rate of change chart to measure performance, and use them as a forecasting tool.
Know your Company’s breakeven point.
Manage your fixed costs and ‘always” be on the lookout for waste, excesses, and other opportunities to reduce expenses.
Know your Cash Position DAILY and learn the value of using a Rolling 13 week cash forecast.
Create a management “dashboard” or one-page scorecard with Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), and Key Financial Results.
Manage your receivables and inventory.

Are you accomplished in all six roles? If the answer is yes, then congratulations! If not, then hopefully you have identified some areas for growth. To be the best CEO and leader possible you may wish to consider learning more about VISTAGE.

To learn more about membership and how VISTAGE can help you better achieve your goals, please call Georganne at 561-350-7440, or email her at georganne@alliancepartnersllc.com