Advice for CEOs

I have heard innumerable times from CEO’s over the course of my career different variations on the same basic statement: “My business is different; most of what other companies do doesn’t apply to mine.” My response to this statement has always been respectful but curious. I tend to ask in return: “How is your business different? How are its underlying principles different from the fundamentals that drive all businesses?” This usually starts a conversation that follows a familiar pattern.

Many CEOs and founders enter a stage of growth where their business is too big to be small, and too small to be big. They’re running as fast as they can and yet the old way of running their business doesn’t seem to work anymore. Do any of these sound familiar? If so you’re probably stuck in No Man’s Land:

In Greek mythology Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba and she had the gift of prophesy. When Cassandra rebuffed the god Apollo’s affections, he cursed his gift by causing Cassandra’s prophesies to be unheeded. So Cassandra was able to foretell the future, but she was fated never to be believed.

In a previous blog post I described a practical approach for the CEO of a growth company to turn his or her vision into reality, breaking it down into steps and assigning accountability for them.

One of the Hardest Things

Executives . . . Working as a team? . . . Do they need to be inspired? . . . Would Oreos get better results than Twinkies? So many questions. We better take them one at a time and explore both what these are and what they are not.