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The six essential roles of the CEO
What’s the most
important attribute for CEOs: Vision? Strategic thinking? The ability to
build client relationships and close the deal?
Obviously, CEOs need to
have all these skills. However, Vistage speaker Lawrence King believes one
attribute stands head and shoulders above the rest—focus.
“Few things impact the
success of a business more than the chief executive getting very clear about
what he or she needs to accomplish,” concludes King. “The more clarity you
have around your own role, the more efficient and effective your performance
will be. And the more you focus on your own role as CEO, the more your
senior managers can focus on theirs.”
six roles for success
Exactly what should the
CEO focus on?
According to King, the
role of the CEO encompasses six essential functions:
1.
Strategist.
This function sets the
future direction of your company. The process for creating effective
strategy involves a team-centered strategic planning retreat, whereby you go
off-site with your management team, look three years out into the future,
and ask the most important strategic question: where will our future profit
margins come from? Chances are they will not come from the same place as
today.
“If you conduct annual retreats, you must have quarterly reviews as well,”
adds King, “because planning minus review equals cynicism. Planning plus
review equals solid momentum.”
2.
Ambassador.
Meet with your important
customers and clients once or twice a year, not for a sales call but for an
informal lunch or dinner. The idea is to get to know the customer and let
them get to know you, so that you can increase their trust in you and
establish your credibility.
Toward the end of the meal, ask your customer, “Where do you see your
company going over the next 18 months and what problems do you anticipate?”
Then sit quietly and listen, so that you can take what you hear back to your
company and turn it into real gold by embracing the third role of inventor.
3.
Inventor.
Success in business requires finding your customer’s pain and developing new
products and services to relieve it. The inventor function ensures that the
strategic direction of the company aligns around the customer’s pain.
4.
Coach.
Become a teacher, coach and mentor to your direct reports. Instill a culture
of learning throughout all levels of the organization. Your direct reports
do not have your big picture perspective, so find ways to teach it to them.
“In particular, your key players have many basic misconceptions about your
financial model, thinking your company and you are doing much better than
you actually are,” notes King. “Teach your people the basic financial model
of the company, so they understand what is really happening from a financial
standpoint.”
5.
Investor.
Treat your company as an investment. Know the market value of your business
and strive to grow it. Improving market value should direct all decisions
for the business and reward the clear focus and direction of the CEO.
6.
Student.
Stay active in some form of continued professional development—not just in
the your area of functional expertise but as a student of leadership.
“These are not things
to do when you happen to find the time,” cautions King. “They must become
your top priorities. Make these six functions real and relevant for you, so
they drive your daily calendar and all your time management decisions.”
staying focused
Surprisingly, King,
believes it is possible to perform the role of the CEO in as little as 20 to
25 hours a week, but only by staying focused on essential CEO activities and
having a top-notch operations team in place, with no toleration of mediocre
performance.
“Someone has to see to it that all the operational stuff gets done,” states
King. “Without a capable management team, you don’t have the luxury of
focusing only on CEO activities.”
To ensure that you spend more time wearing the CEO hat and not all the
others in the company, he recommends the following:
-
“Whose job is it?” bell.
Put a
bell inside your head and let it go off at random intervals. When the bell
rings, ask, “Whose job am I doing right now?” If it’s not the CEO’s job,
ask, “Why am I doing this job and who does it belong to?”
-
“A” priority list.
Ask
yourself, “What are the six most important things I do each month? Of
these, which ones belong on my ‘A’ priority list and which should I
delegate?” Then monitor how much time you spend on your “A” priorities
compared to less-important activities.
-
Personal mission
statement.
Most CEOs have a vision
statement for their company. It also helps to have a vision statement for
yourself. In addition to knowing where you want your company to go, you
also need to have clarity about where you want to go as a CEO.
-
CEO success profile.
Create a one-page, bullet-point success profile that focuses on what you
need to accomplish as CEO. The profile can include setting the vision and
strategic direction, identifying new products and services, creating the
right kind of culture—anything essential to your company’s success that
only you can do. Print your success profile, keep it visible, and use it
to make decisions on a daily basis.
“It may take several
iterations to come up with a powerful profile that really reflects you,”
notes King. “And you may struggle with what you need to hold on to versus
what you need to let go of. However, plow through as many drafts as
necessary until you get it right. In order to be effective, the profile must
focus on the results that only you can produce.
“In my experience, most
CEOs know what they need to do to fulfill their role. The problem is they
allow themselves to get sucked into doing other people’s jobs. Focusing on
the six key roles and your success profile will go a long way toward keeping
you on track and ensuring that others are doing what you pay them to do.”
This information is brought to you by Vistage
International, the world’s largest CEO membership organization. Since
1957, executives have been coming to Vistage to accelerate the growth of
their businesses, and themselves. That growth comes from access to a local
group of trusted peers, and to a worldwide network of more than 12,000
progressive and practiced leaders who are driven to achieve breakthrough
performance. Learn more at
http://www.vistage.com/
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