Tag Archives: Role

How Do You Manage Your To-Do List? Five Recommendations

Situation: The Company downsized during the recession. The CEO and sales staff are overburdened by administrative and business development tasks. What’s the best way to bring to add resources to support sales and infrastructure?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look at what hats you are wearing. Wear the hats that fit best and take off the others.
    • If an activity is not core to your success, off-load it. For example: bookkeeping, shipping and receiving, records and basic correspondence.
    • These are necessary, but don’t generate revenue.
  • If your core businesses are sales and service, is one more profitable than the other? Can you outsource pieces of the less profitable activity short-term?
  • Where do you want to be personally in the next 2 years? On what roles do you want to focus? Build a plan to transition you into these roles.
    • The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber is a quick read that outlines the process.
  • You may not need to bring in a high level operations manager. Consider hiring an office manager to help organize you and your business development staff. For a smaller operation this person can take care of phones, bookkeeping, shipping and receiving and routine correspondence. This will allow executive staff and sales to focus on growing and servicing customer demand.
  • During the summer months hire high school or college summer interns. They provide an inexpensive source of labor, high levels of energy and creativity, and are eager for work experience.

Key Words: Business Development, Core Business, Sales, Service, Outsource, Role, Office Manager, Intern  [like]

Are Your Employees Living the Company’s Values? Four Recommendations

Situation: A tenet of the Company is that all decisions are made consistent with Company Values. However, some of my managers are asking for guidance on how to do this. How have other CEOs encouraged managers to make decisions consistent with company values?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Create cross-functional teams to address initiatives, solve problems and develop new processes consistent with company values.
    • This builds understanding other departments’ perspectives, and awareness of the impact of decisions on the company as a whole.
    • It builds awareness of company values and fights unhealthy competition between functions.
  • One company created an employee task force to encourage living company values. Their solution includes:
    • Review the company’s values and consider revising how they are stated for easy learning.
    • Involve employees in discussions of company values and how they are applied in their departments.
    • Create a cross-functional employee task force to address inter-departmental conflicts and to suggest solutions in line with company values.
    • Expect everyone to know the company’s values, and occasionally test them.
  • Build a vision of what the company looks like as an expression of its values.
    • Make living this vision part of your role.
    • Include living company values as a formal responsibility of managers.
    • Reward initiatives that build company values into company efforts.
    • Regularly review with your mangers their execution of company values.
  • Create “SMART” objectives around implementation of company values, and hold individuals accountable for achieving their objectives.

Key Words: Company Values, Decisions, Employee Involvement, Initiative, Vision, Role, Objectives, Accountability  [like]

What’s My Role as CEO? Five Perspectives

Situation: The CEO questions whether he is the right person to lead the Company. The Company has solid revenues and profitability, but growth is lower than expected. How can the CEO improve his situation and solidify his leadership?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The primary functions of the CEO are to assure the maintenance of company values, to provide vision, and to monitor resource allocation within the company.
  • Identify your strengths, and the most important areas where you need help. Create an organizational chart not of positions but of strengths that are needed within the company. Compare these positions with your own strengths, and focus your own activities on your strengths. Promote or hire talent to support you in the latter areas.
    • As you hire or promote and delegate, make sure that you are allowing those with new responsibility the latitude to run their areas of responsibility.
  • Should I consider hiring a CEO or COO?
    • Maybe. If you do, first identify the key leadership traits that we most want to see in a candidate.
    • If you hire a CEO, this individual should have skin in the game. They must be perceived as a leader, and there must be a clean hand-off.
    • Consider hiring a COO. This can be someone willing to take this role with the understanding that your long-term objective is to replace yourself as CEO. A person unwilling to come on as COO and to develop into the CEO may not be the right candidate.

Key Words: Leadership, Role, Strengths, Delegation, Organizational Chart, Values, Vision, Resource Allocation, CEO, COO                                                             [like]