A recent LinkedIN post quoted Anand Eswaran, an executive with a very successful career at several huge tech companies. The topic was what a first-time CEO has to unlearn, which was intriguing. The advice is geared toward a CEO stepping into an up and running company. In my last post, I focused on the CEO-challenges of a turnaround or restart. When the board searches for a new CEO to lead a turnaround, they start out looking for an experienced CEO who has done it before, but if the ‘baby is ugly’ they move down the ranks to a talented but inexperienced CEO - the first-timer, who is hungry enough to take the risk of failure in the hope of becoming successful. I think the advice also fits an entrepreneur who has suddenly found they have built a company that is scaling up quickly, hiring people and gaining market traction, and now they have to figure out how to lead the team.
The first suggestion is to “fire the operator.” A first-time CEO probably was a former operator or doer. Throughout their career, success came from hands-on action. In a scaling business, the CEO has to do more leading and less executing. Eswaran’s view is that the role shifts to deciding what is worth doing, and I would add that the next component is to inspire the troops to stay focused on that work.
Eswaran’s recommendation is to become the “Chief Repeating Officer.” The CEO needs to consistently say the same thing over and over. In my experience, repetition is the only way to make a message sink in and become actionable throughout a team. A key requirement for the repeated message is that it has to be short, simple, and meaningful. Long-winded explanations do not work. The best example of this is in the mission statement. One company I joined had three different full-page mission statement posted on three different employee systems. Nobody had a clue what the mission really was. I advocate a very short (10 words or less) statement that everyone can learn, internalize, and repeat. Steve Jobs once said he wanted Apple’s mission statement to be so simple and so ingrained that if you woke up an employee at 3:00am and asked them the mission, they would know it immediately.
The third advice is to “Trade certainty for "I don't know, let's find out.” One of my favorite business authors, David Marquet, talks about CEOs that know everything but tell nothing. What he means is even if you know the answers, stop giving orders and start asking questions that let subordinate figure out the right thing to do. Eswaran is going a step further, and not assuming the CEO knows all the answers. I have often written about black and white versus gray challenges. CEOs live in the gray zone. If the answer was black or white, someone else would have already figured it out before it got to the CEO. That someone else was often the first-time CEO in their prior position, but now they have to let others figure it out and step into the role of dealing with uncertain gray-zone issues. There is a certain strength in having the confidence to say “I don’t know.” However, first-timers often have imposter syndrome, and are reluctant to admit their lack of an answer. The job demands that they overcome all the inhibitions and become comfortable in the gray zone, including admitting when they do not have the answer. They just need to have the curiosity to help figure it out.
Eswaran’s next advice is to “rewire your relationship with speed. Be calmer about being wrong and fiercer about being slow.” This one puzzled me at first, eventually I came to see it as a permission framework for the company. It is an admonishment to the team to act fast, and know that mistakes will happen, and that the CEO is alright with mistakes. I am not totally aligned with that interpretation of the message, but I see an alternative interpretation that is applicable to the CEO’s role. As a first-timer, you are going to make mistakes. You have to realize that your job as the ultimate decider requires you to act, and not be trapped by analysis paralysis. A wise person I worked with used to say “never make a decision before you have to because you may learn more that will support the decision, but never delay making a decision that has to be made.” Be deliberate, but do not waste time avoiding a potential mistake. Another wise person advised to rank decisions by their level of risk and the impact of getting it wrong. If the impact is low, then do not sweat the decision too much. However, if getting it wrong can be catastrophic, take your time and be cautious.
Lastly, Eswaran says to “delegate without abdicating.” The Truman line “the buck stops here” applies to every CEO. The mandate is to delegate to the team and not become the center of the universe where all decisions are made, but that does not mean the CEO relinquishes responsibility for everything that goes on in the company. A CEO has to develop trust in each member of the team, but the rule is ‘trust but verify.’
Whenever I speak with first-time CEOs, they always say they are surprised by how demanding the role is, and how much they have to learn. One CEO harkened back to a line I often quote: “the tyranny of the urgent is the enemy of the good.” When everything seems urgent, there is no time left to devote to the hard work of leading. One last quoute to keep in mind: “everything that got you to where you are will keep you from getting to where you need to be.” The CEO role is different from every other executive position, so you cannot succeed by continuing to do what you used to do. Eswaran’s advice helps to sort through the demands and prioritize the changes required to truly become a CEO.