Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps. We must step up the stairs. — Václav Havel
Great leaders and extraordinary entrepreneurs do more to achieve greatness. The daily routines of a CEO reflects his or her values, morals, goals and vision in life. What you do on daily basis determines your level of progress and how fast you can reach your company’s goals and milestones.
Generally leaders of large firms plan lots of activities in advance and spend more time at the company and in meetings, sets budgets, forms partnerships, hires great teams to take control of tasks, establishes relationships with stakeholders, run the numbers
Build smart and great teams
Productive CEO’s spend quality time cultivating and building great teams. Bring in people who are better at their jobs than you could ever be. Give them the opportunity to be creative, set timelines for project delivery. The best thing you can offer a smart employee is some kind of independence and freedom to work and deliver without unnecessary pressure. Believe they can do what they are good at and they will if you create a conducive startup culture. A great place can attract and retain smart people.
Your job is not to do everyone else’s job, but to help everyone else do their jobs better.
A productive CEO is very good at delegating. In a startup, delegating is not a luxury. Most startup CEO’s do almost everything. They wear different hearts at different times when it matters. As your company grows, you should learn how to properly delegate certain tasks to smaller teams to accomplish. Your business can achieve more and work effectively if you can delegate what needs to be done to the right person at the right time. You need to do a better job at matching employee skills with tasks to be accomplished.
Ask for Feedback daily
Guess what? You’re not as smart as you think you are. And you will make mistakes. Ask your employees, customers, partners, etc. for regular feedback. Actively solicit feedback from third parties: friends, peers, associates. Share your issues and how you’re handling them, and ask for an honest assessment.
Create systems for gathering feedback. Interview customers, competitors, analysts, and others in your industry to know how your company and products are perceived. Once a day, go talk to one of your low-level employees—someone more capable than you in their area of expertise—and learn from them.
Get teams on the same page on weekly basis.
Make sure you teams and employees are looking at the same pages of your progress as you build towards the bigger vision and goal. The weekly, monthly and annual goals should be obvious to everybody on your team. A productive CEO reminds team members every now and then about the bigger task ahead and how they are doing and what should be done to achieve business targets.
Make sure people within the organization know your goals, and know what you can be counted on to do. Hold yourselves accountable. If you don’t meet your goals, withhold your bonus, take no raise, and treat yourself exactly as you would treat an employee who missed their targets.
Image courtesy Lifehacker.com