Every C.E.O. Must Excel In These 3 Areas!

Working for a leader who doesn’t excel in these three areas is like working for Michael Scott, except it’s not funny. If your boss struggles in any of these
areas, then you need to find creative ways to help him shore up his weaknesses, find creative workarounds or run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

1. Communication – An employee is heading up an important project and the team is needing some decisions made by the CEO. A lengthy email explaining the necessary decisions and the ramifications of each is sent to the CEO. He “replies to all” with one word – “yes”. No explanation. No capitalization. No punctuation. And sadly enough no direction which is the only thing that everyone needed. The team decides to make the product black in order to keep it moving and at the completion the CEO is upset that it isn’t white, which is the exact input everyone tried to draw out of him from the beginning. The only thing worse than vague, ambiguous, unclear, ineffective communication is NON-communication. This isn’t always due to indecisiveness. Sometimes it’s due to to disorganization, but we’ll look at that in a second.
2. Execution – Execution in business doesn’t mean killing people, it means gettin…stuff…done! Do you work somewhere where there’s lots of activity, but little progress to show for it? I worked for a company that spent hours a week, months at a time, discussing insignificant things like the design of a small, secondary sign at the entrance of the parking lot that most people would never even notice. The end result was the company’s logo on a white background. FACEPALM! Add up the number of people in each meeting x their hourly pay breakdown x the number of meetings per week x the number of weeks and you’ll soon see that literally thousands of dollars were spent making the world’s most obvious and simple decision while key things like “How are we going to lower our embarrassingly high and costly turnover rate?” went ignored. Everything rises and falls with leadership and if you want to be part of a productive and growing organization you need someone who can get…stuff…done!
3. Organization – The order of this acronym, CEO, is unfortunate because systematically this should be first. Yes, communication is vitally important, but if you’re not organized you can’t communicate important details effectively and there is absolutely no way you can get…stuff…done. I worked for a manager who thought it was cute that projects stayed stuck because she left contracts and important papers stacked on her desk for MONTHS waiting for her signature while employees and businesses waited for the next step in the process. She bragged about this because she thought it made her look important. That’s not something that’s cute that you should mention in a meeting and then laugh off. If what you are doing is important, then you will find a way to get organized. If what you do is not important enough to get organized, then please do everyone a favor and move on.

Communication, Execution and Organization are not the only areas where a CEO must succeed to be effective, but they are three must-haves. If you are a leader who is not naturally geared this way, then you need to get creative fast! Find systems, processes and people who can shore up your weaknesses then go do something great.