Feature
Issue No. 27 - February/March
How to be an effective CEO
by Mr Marcus Campbell
Chief Executive Officers spend much of their time focusing on day-to-day issues and outcomes. They may feel trapped on a treadmill of activity with ever-increasing workloads, a lack of fulfillment and general frustration with life.
This rugged breed of individuals, thrust into success through entrepreneurial activities and feeling as through they have become a CEO through default, quite often feel lonely and despairing.
They may ask themselves many questions. What is a CEO? What does a CEO do? How should a CEO act and think?
Role definition can cause major personal conflict for a successful entrepreneur. The major issue facing the newfound CEO is how to begin to act like one when success has been achieved through being an outstanding do-er.
Recently a CEO told me that the most significant change that he had to make was to stop thinking like a salesman and start thinking strategically.
In this process of change there are many steps to take, including refocusing, self-analysis, evaluation and application.
I want to discuss some of these in turn.
1. Define Your Role
You may say that you have defined your role, yet you still seem to be focusing on a range of conflicting activities.
When did you define your role last? How did you do it?
May I suggest that you first clearly and succinctly write down in a sentence how you see your role.
Next, identify no more than 10 major job functions and list them. Try to focus on outcomes and what you see as the core functions of your role – the things that you see as being of absolute importance to you and your company, such as strategy identification and implementation, organizational effectiveness through building an effective team, strategic financial leadership and managing external stakeholder relationships through being the company ambassador.
Remember the Pareto Principle: 20% of your job will give you 80% of your results, so focus o...
