I can’t remember when I was asked that question. It could have been while advising a fellow CEO a few years back, or maybe it came from a team member at an all-hands meeting or in a “brown bag” lunch session.
I’m sure as part of my answer I hit the important beats:
Help craft an inspiring vision and north star for the company
Help create a clear strategic operating plan for the company
Help build a great team and a “team first” cultural ethos
Help fundraise the capital the company needs to get to profitability
Help navigate the company to an exit that benefits team members and shareholders
Help make the critical decisions that move the company forward every day
Reflecting on the list above, it’s the last one that, though less heroic sounding than the others, is the essence of what a CEO does. And when you think about those first five you recognize that they’re each built on numerous decisions.
For example, you craft the company’s vision by deciding what to say yes to and what to say no to. You build the team by deciding who’s on it and what role each team member plays. You fundraise by deciding what trade-offs you’re willing to make to get the capital you need.
A Day in the CEO’s ‘Decision-Making’ Life
While I certainly remember defining a vision and strategic plan, and also fundraising and navigating the M&A process, what’s harder to recall is the nonstop decision making that underpins the CEO job. Moving from meeting to meeting for many years in conference rooms, and then starting in March 2020 in Zoom rooms, I found each conversation was different.
A typical day might have looked like this:
9 am product roadmap review
10 am sales prospect call
11 am 1-1 with one of my e-team leaders
12 pm “Brown Bag” lunch with a group of folks from our customer support team
1 pm call with a reporter covering some new trend in our industry
2 pm another sales prospect call, or was it a call with an existing customer?
3 pm call with one of our VC investors / board members
4 pm call with a general counsel to discuss something I’m sure was very important
5 pm business review with our head of finance
6 pm chance to read and respond to email
While each meeting had a different theme and included attendees from different backgrounds and expertise, one common thread that held true for me as CEO in virtually every one of those meetings was the need to make a decision. Or in some cases, the need to make multiple decisions.
Take the schedule above again as an example, but this time review it with a few sample decisions that might have needed to be made in each meeting:
9 am product roadmap review
What projects do we need to accelerate? Which resources can we shift from one project to another? How do we get better insight from our customers on whether we’re building something they’ll actually pay us for?
10 am sales prospect call
Is this customer important enough to have on our “win” list that we should offer them a price discount? If yes, how should we structure this discount?
11 am a 1-1 with one of my e-team leaders
Do we need to make any changes to this leader’s organization?
12 pm a “Brown Bag” lunch with a group of folks from our customer support team
How explicitly can I answer questions about the status of our fundraising process?
1 pm a call with a reporter covering some new trend in our industry
How much detail should I share about our strategic plan and customer pipeline with this reporter?
2 pm another sales prospect call, or was it a call with an existing customer?
How can we turn this cranky customer into a happy one? Do we need to build something specific for them even if it doesn’t scale across the rest of our customer base?
3 pm call with one of our investors / board members
What’s the right level of detail to provide in this update given we’re still six weeks away from our next board meeting?
4 pm call with a general counsel to discuss something I’m sure was very important
Whew, it’s not a crisis! Our GC just wants me to sign off on the final list of employee stock option grants we approved at the last board meeting. Yes, send them out to the recipients!
5 pm business review with our head of finance
Who the hell schedules this kind of meeting at the end of the day? Well we’re here, so the decision before us is which hiring plan scenario should we greenlight? Are there any places in the business where we should dial expenses back in order to offset our burn rate if we end up hiring faster than expected?
6 pm chance to read and respond to email
How many of these emails do I need to read right now? How many of these emails do I need to respond to right now?
7 pm …Oh crap, I skipped lunch and I’m now starving. What do I want to grab for dinner on my way home?
Some General Tips on Making Decisions
Whether you’re a CEO or not, here’s a list you might take into consideration when it comes to how you approach decision-making. By no means is this list exhaustive or perfect, so feel free to add your own spin to it:
Take decision making seriously. Each decision you are part of impacts people close to you, whether they are part of your team, customer base, shareholder group, or, most importantly, your family.
Be informed and gather input from the experts around you, and know when you have enough data and expertise to make a decision. Avoid analysis paralysis.
Whenever possible, enable and encourage the team to make the decision before you need to step in.
Know when you need to decisively step in and make a decision if the team can’t get there on their own.
Define explicitly what success (or failure) looks like coming from the decision, set up a clear way to transparently measure this success (or failure), and clearly set the timeframe in which the decision will be evaluated as a success (or failure).
Keep in mind that an organization rolls forward primarily based on the speed and quality of the decisions made every day, week, month and quarter, and that pretty much every one of those decisions can be rolled back, reversed, modified, or otherwise altered after it’s been made. So make a call, move forward, and adjust when necessary.
And while very few decisions are of the existential “make or break the company” variety, be sure to recognize when you and the team need to make a decision of that import. And by all means, when you need to make one of those decisions, don’t screw it up!
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