Lesson: What's the Role of a CEO?

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1:10And now, enjoy the show. Hey there, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. I hope you're having a fantastic week. Today on Epic Entrepreneurs, I'd like to talk to you about the role of a CEO. In entrepreneurship, a lot of times the founder becomes the CEO. Sometimes they might hire it out. Sometimes they may do it themselves. But in any event, we need to understand the role of a CEO. What does a CEO actually do? How do they perform the business? How do they add value to the marketplace? How does it all work? Well, let me give you a couple of things. I just went out and Googled what's the role of a CEO.

1:57I wanted to see what people had. So the first one comes from the Corporate Finance Institute, and they have five things that they believe a corporate CEO should do. Number one, they should set and execute organizational strategy. Number two, they build the senior leadership team. Number three, they make capital allocation decisions. In other words, what to invest in. Number four, they set the vision, the values, and the corporate culture. And number five, they communicate effectively with all the stakeholders. Sounds pretty good, right? Sounds like a pretty good. Well, let's see what Hive Life has to say.

2:47They actually have seven things that a CEO should be doing. The first is to develop strategic objectives and direction. Number two, they implement proposed plans. Number three, they do budgeting and forecasting. Absolutely, they're a part of that. If they have a CFO, the CFO would probably do more of that. Number four, they're responsible for public relations. Absolutely, the CEO is often the face of the company. They're the ones that need to talk to the people outside. They're the ones that need to talk to the media. Number five, they communicate with the board of directors. Number six, they track company performance.

3:30And number seven, they're responsible for establishing work culture. Pretty hard to argue with any of that. SHRM, which is a great organization, the Society of Human Resources Managers, I actually had a job description or a sample job description showing up when I googled what is the role of a CEO. And here's what they have to say. Number one, they oversee ongoing operations of all divisions. Number two, a CEO would manage the direction of the company towards its primary goals and objectives. Number three, it oversees employment decisions at the executive level. So yes, they would oversee the hiring of a chief financial officer, a chief technology officer, anyone in the C-suite, for example, president potentially.

4:25Number four, they lead a team of executives to consider mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and any kind of expansions or growth-orientated things. Number five, they promote communication and cooperation among the divisions to create a spirit of unity in the organization. so those all sound pretty good they sound you know i always think job descriptions or these kind of things tend to sound a little too sterile for me as an entrepreneur as a as a business owner but you know they we all need that we all need a good idea of what's expected i i you know if i were doing it and obviously in an individual case i would add in more specifics and you should as well if you're looking at being hiring a ceo or becoming a ceo you need to understand what you are you know what you do now if you're already in that position you're kind of learning what to do you may want to take to use those as a checklist but i want to go to peter drunker now peter drunker was one of the leading thought leaders on management and actually i think he still is he's not alive but I think he still is one of the top thought leaders in management.

5:52I mean, he was just right about a lot of things. So, number one, here's what he had to say. He said, the role of a CEO is to define and interpret the meaningful outside. outside. So what I think that means is what considerations outside of the company do we as a company need to take into account? In other words, it's pretty easy inside a company to get caught up in the day-to-day, get caught up in what we're doing, get caught up in our vision, and not pay attention to what's going on outside. So the CEO has to act as a bit of a bridge to the outside environment, to a bit of a bridge to the outside company, to a bit of a bridge to what kind of impact the company wants to make on the world.

6:47Number two, a CEO has to constantly be answering the question, what business are we in and what business are we not in? So constantly refining, constantly deciding, hey, this is the business we're in. This is what we're good at. This is how we're going to grow the business. This is what we don't need to do. One of my mentors said to me one time, success is what you say no to. Or success is who you say no to. Either way, it's pretty exciting to decide the things you don't want to do, get them off your plate and get on to what it is you want to do. So as a corporate leader, the CEO must decide that for the corporation.

7:34As an individual, you should be deciding that for yourself, whether you're the CEO or not. The third item that Peter Drucker said was that the CEO must balance sufficient current yield, in other words, what we're doing in the present, making enough money now, with the necessary investment in the future. There's a balancing act there going on. You can't invest all your money back into the future. Some of it has to show up as profits. So there's a balancing act there the CEO has to do. And the fourth is the CEO needs to shape the values and standards of the organization. So that's Peter Drucker's view on what a CEO has to do.

8:16Peter Drucker, excellent, pretty smart guy. I think he's paying attention to that for sure. Now, here's my view. I think it boils down to three. Peter Drucker had four things. Corporate Finance Institute had five. Hive Life had seven. And SHRM had five. So they all have a lot. But to simplify it down, here's my view of what a CEO should do. Number one, the CEO must keep the vision of the company. so our vision is world abundance through business re-education it's brad's job as the ceo of action coach to keep that vision my company action coach growth partners my vision to keep is my job to keep the vision of action coach growth partners which is w and c abundance through business re-education and to be the number one regarded business education and training resource in Western North Carolina.

9:22So that's our vision. That's what we're about. It's my job to keep that vision. Whatever the vision that you have for your business, whatever your business vision is for your business, that's your job to keep it. Number two, I believe that a CEO has to be the guardian of the culture. Now that is one thing that came up in every single one of the lists of what a great CEO or what the role of a CEO needs to be, was they have to be the guardian of the culture. There was something in there about values or culture. So the CEO has to live the culture, has to live the values, has to model the values. The CEO has to expect his people to live and model the value.

10:07You have to see who's out of culture, bring them back into culture, or potentially if they're far enough out, then they may need to move on to somewhere else. So the CEO is the guardian of the culture. And then there were a whole lot of other things that I thought were super specific. But the third thing that I think a CEO needs to do is to hold the energy in the company to allow the team to achieve the results, to achieve the goals, to achieve the strategies, to achieve the vision of the company. So in that, I've never met a CEO that I didn't think had it. Somehow they knew how to hold energy.

10:51They needed to hold energy for people to be able to get the job done, whether they were outgoing, whether they were introverted, whether they were task oriented, whether they were people oriented, it didn't matter. They all had a way of holding energy that allowed the company to be successful. So there you have it. My view, CEO needs to keep the vision. They need to be the guardian of the culture and they need to create an atmosphere of energy. They need to hold the energy in the company to allow it to be successful in the marketplace. So if you'd like to have a chat about how to be a better CEO, how to be a better business owner, how to be a better entrepreneur, love to have a chat with you.

11:39Just reach out to me. All my information is in the show notes. You can book it on our website. You can call me. My phone number's out there as well. However you want to get me, text me. I don't care. I hope you keep it epic. I hope you keep it fun. I'm grateful for you for listening to this I'm grateful to my clients and until next time all the best thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs here's four things you can do first you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1 second you can subscribe to the podcast hey you get it the more subscribers we have the more cool things we can offer you Three, you can also go out and give us a five-star rating everywhere.

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13:12Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.