The last blog entry I wrote [Who’s the Boss? What is a CEO?] made me think about overall business decisiveness and it’s critical role in growing a startup properly. There are many synonyms and attributes of decisiveness – certainty, determination, finality, resolve, authority. But there’s no single formula or magic combination for this quality.
Decisiveness is one of the key skills for the leader of a startup to succeed; not everyone involved, but definitely the leader/CEO. It’s fine if you’re not that type, just be honest about it and find someone to take role. An indecisive leader will get run over by the crowd quickly and lose the respect of those around him/her; better to let someone else run the show and focus on another task.
A strong CEO in an active startup should be making and implementing several decisions every day. The job of CEO of a real operating company includes many lonely times, no matter how many people surround you. But no matter what, the bullseye in on your head.
For most strong leaders decisiveness is an innate quality, a feeling of empowerment and confidence that comes from somewhere within as well as the support of those around you. Some people are just born with it, or into it. A great example is Sophia Amoruso.
You thrive on the pressure of making decisions. Inspiration comes from beating obstacles in your past, overcoming a hardship or two, intense desire to succeed, past (or current) poverty, or some other experience in life where correct decision making took you from bad to good. Also, a startup CEO is usually much more decisive in his/her 2nd or 3rd startup than the first. They’ve “been there before”, understand the forks in the road, have been hardened and/or humbled a little by mistakes.
Lack of decisiveness at the top impedes growth. Lack of decisiveness running a startup usually is related to lack of experience, a different personality, or lack of desire to be that person. Can decisiveness be developed or taught? I think so. Self-confidence?
Probably not so easily acquired. I was quite lucky early in my career to have several great role models (and a few bad ones). Examples and proactive mentoring came from several places for me, some quite early in my career. I’m now trying to give back by advising others and mentoring startups.
So be decisive as the overall leader of your startup and surround yourself with support to make better decisions. Find mentors, delegate, let go of details. Or be honest with yourself if this isn’t you and find find someone qualified whom you trust to take that role and let them run with it.
I had dinner recently with a former colleague and good friend, let’s call him Al, who has recently transitioned from CTO to CEO of an early stage company he founded; he’s struggling with every aspect of his new job. Al was originally the de-facto leader through his first funding round, then at the urging of many around him recruited an experienced CEO to “take it to the next level”. Potential investors, former bosses, and current shareholders felt this was a critical step in for them to invest more time or money. The common line was “You’re not a CEO”. The new CEO was performing well, hitting milestones, preparing new funding and building the business, but he and Al couldn’t get along.
So now Al is now back in charge. This happens often in the early stages, sometimes because the new CEO is a bad match, but that’s usually just an excuse. Usually the CEO leaves for good or bad reasons, or the founder can’t let go of control of the company. In this case it was the latter. Als investors and employees are quite unhappy and he’s not sleeping much.
In hearing his frustrations I figured out his main problem – he’s having serious problems making decisions and sticking with them, which is why he brought in a professional CEO in the first place. He has no reference point for many key decisions so lacks the confidence to execute decisions. His frustration is that this doesn’t happen to him in technical matters – he’s brilliant at those decisions. Technical leaders frequently underestimate the job of the CEO or business leader in a fledgling startup. They use the logic – hey, I’m extremely smart, so marketing, sales, and business development can’t be as hard as developing an entire software platform. This is a big mistake, and a common reason why startups never get out of the gate.
I’ve been the incoming CEO several times in early stage startups, taking over for the founder. This transition is difficult to pull off, but necessary for many companies to scale. Emotionally it’s very hard for a founder to “let go” and trust an outsider to care as much as he/she does about their baby. There are also others around the founder that can feel ownership and impede the new CEO – a spouse, other early employees, a displaced senior manager who thought he/she had a shot at the job. I’ve experienced all of these situations, but I’ve also had many good experiences where I did have sponsorship and support, and succeeded.
In Al’s case, he never really committed himself to stepping aside, even though he said the words. He admits that now. In his actions he inadvertently sabotaged his new partner, changing the CEOs decisions without discussion, etc. He felt that the new CEO was making “too many” decisions. He obviously wasn’t ready. I realize that he still isn’t ready.
The reason for our meeting was to see if I was interested in the job – he feels that our long term relationship would provide the foundation for a successful transition, but I know it wouldn’t work. I explained to him what CEO means to me – the final decision maker in a company, answerable to a real Board of Directors, of which the founder is a member but not the only member. The E in CEO stands for execution, making things happen, responsible for the results. The CEO must communicate clearly to everyone involved what he/she is doing, especially if taking over the reins from a founder, but should be supported by all as the final major decision maker. If that process works, the company works. Without that authority they become ineffective quickly and are only doing portions of the job, and can’t take full responsibility; then they leave and you have to start all over.
I explained to Al two reasons why I wouldn’t join his company: 1) With all due respect, I don’t feel that he’s any more ready to let go than he was a year ago, even though he respects my abilities and has comfortably worked for me before, and 2) the company is distressed now, unhappy employees, unhappy investors, delays in both the business and technical initiatives, messy equity stakes and a decrease in trust all around. Like I said, a Big Mistake. I told him his best chance is to try to learn how to be a CEO or merge his company as fast as possible. But this one is most likely kaput.
march 16, 2010 –– This is my first post, still in alpha mode here. So many things to write about, but so many blogs are boring, verbose.
My focus here will be the art of CEOing (past and present), the world of tech/software/Internet/vc/funding/ etc.
And I’ll try to keep these posts brief. Hopefully they will connect as they unfold into a story, like a reality show for tech CEOs, with flashbacks thrown in.
Much of my motivation to do this came from Jeff Jarvis, his book more than his blog.
SXSW: For a first topic, the most pertinent thing that comes to mind is SXSW since it’s on right now. I’ve been in the past and contemplated going this year, but have an instinct that it’s become so “cool” that it’s no longer cool, a caricature of itself.
Too big, too much drift from its original focus – Music, Film, Creativity. It’s good that Interactive is so big now, should be good for me, that’s my industry, but it still doesn’t feel right somehow. Maybe I’m just jealous ‘cuz I’m not there. They should split into 2, 3 groups? like Hannover Fair did. That worked.
Either way, I’ll monitor feedback from afar and inevitably correct at least some of my guesses about it. Lot’s of parties – my plancast list of parties is unbelievable, maybe I avoided that, the alcohol fueled networking, my body’s not ready for that this week/month. Could have pitched Rarefied there, but that’s a bit in limbo anyway.
Well, let’s see what happens here with this alpha blog. In the meantime, here’s a picture of my dog Frida…
