A chief executive officer (CEO)
is the highest-ranking corporate officer (executive) or administrator in charge of
total management of an organization.
An individual appointed as a CEO of a
corporation, company, organization, or agency typically reports to the board of directors. In British English, terms often used as synonyms for CEO include
managing
director (
MD) and
chief executive (
CE).
How To Be A Good CEO ?
I.
Have A Good Leadership
The ability to lead effectively is based
on a number of key skills. These skills are highly sought after by employers as
they involve dealing with people in such a way as to motivate, enthuse and
build respect.
Leadership roles are all around us, not
just in a work environment. They can be applied to any situation where you are
required to take the lead, professionally, socially and at home in family
settings. Ideally, leaders become leaders because they have credibility, and
because people want to follow them.
Along the way to achieving the
vision the leader will come upon many problems. Effective problem
solving is therefore another key leadership skill. With a positive
attitude, problems can become opportunities and learning experiences, and a
leader can gain much information from a problem addressed.
Leaders also need to be very
organised on a personal level, and able to manage themselves and their time, so
that they can spend time doing what they need to do, and not on other tasks.
As well as organising their time
and their teams, leaders need to spend a bit of time on themselves, and
particularly on their self-motivation. A leader who lacks self-motivation will
struggle to motivate others, as people are quick to detect a lack of sincerity.
II.
Have
A Good Persuasive Skills
Persuasion is the ability to influence.
According to Tony Robbins, persuasion is the most important skill you can
develop. Why? Because without it, your ideas won’t get
traction. Without influence, you won’t get the resources or support
you need. Without influence, you won’t be able to communicate your unique
value to the world.
If you can communicate what you have to offer, you can create great
change. Tony Robbins writes:
“Power today is the ability to communicate and the ability to
persuade. If you’re a persuader with no legs, you’ll persuade someone to
carry you. If you have no money, you’ll persuade someone to lend you
some. Persuasion may be the ultimate skill for creating change.
After all, if you’re a persuader who’s alone in the world and doesn’t want to
be, you’ll find a friend or a lover. If you’re a persuader with a good
product to sell, you’ll find someone who’ll buy it. You can have an idea
or a product that can change the world, but without the power to persuade, you
have nothing. Communicating what you have to offer is what life is all
about. It’s the most important skill you can develop.”
III.
Straight
To The Time - Management
How
do CEO’s manage their time? Do they always prioritize? Are they
procrastinators? Not the CEOs I’ve known. I once read an interview of Ben
Kugler on how he managed his time. In Success Magazine’s article, “Time
Management – 3 Tips from a Successful CEO (and Father, and Husband): How Ben
Kugler Makes Time Work for Him, Kugler offers three
tips on time management. Unfortunately, the article was never available online,
but below are his tips with my commentary:
Determine
what your goals are: we all have goals. Some goals feel big. I was once
asked create a sales operations function, adding to my marketing department’s
responsibilities. Rather than feel the pressure of the goal, I reframed it, by
thinking about this goals in manageable bites. One step led to another and then
another. Before I knew it, I had the sales operations plan, with job functions,
each job’s responsibilities, and reports ready for my CEOs review.
Learn to
prioritize: when I fail to prioritize, I become unfocused on how to
approach the goal, project, or task. I find, that when I fail to define the
requirements of what needs to done, I’m unable to prioritize. I start there, at
the scope of work or requirements definition, so I can then determine what’s a
priority or what istn’t one. I become focused again, after this step, at times,
I’ll started on some easy steps that are a lower priority. This allows me to
build up energy, so I can work on the larger, more high priority stuff. This
approach allows me to get over any mental blocks. I still know what my
priorities are, but I just needed momentum.
Always have a plan of action: action
plans are simple. They’re just lists of tasks that need to be done to get the
object of the plan done. How can you manage your time, if you don’t have the
steps defined on how to accomplish the goal? Your actions may become chaotic or
out of sequence, without an action plan. It’s like not having a grocery list
when you need to buy groceries. You go into the store, you can’t remember what you
needed, you wind up picking stuff you don’t need. All the while, you’re wasting
time by browsing around, when you could have know which departments you needed
to shop in. A lack of an action plan wastes time.
IV.
How a CEO’s Focus on
Organizational Purpose Elevates Performance
For many companies, “purpose” is defined at inception. “Often, the
purpose of an organization is its story,” noted Laura Garnett of Garnett
Consulting, who cited Starbucks and Zappos as examples. “Why was the company started? Who was the founder? What was the founder’s
passion—his or her personal story—and then that lives on as the purpose of the
organization for the next CEO and the next after that. When companies start
without that original purpose or story, then they lose out because they have to
manufacture it later on.”
While
the road to establishing an organization’s purpose, aligning employees behind
it and sustaining that alignment over time can be arduous, the benefits are
well worth the journey. “A clear and compelling, heartfelt purpose becomes a
magnetic north to align people around, and then you all move in the same
direction,” who notes that companies that have a defined and well communicated
purpose enjoy many benefits, including improved financial performance, customer
trust and brand reputation. “A clear purpose inspires employees increasing
their engagement, satisfaction and productivity reduces turnover and attracts
the best talent.”
V.
Have A Good Plan For The Future
In order to become a champion, you have to think like
one. When Muhammad
Ali beat George Foreman in their classic fight, "The Rumble in the
Jungle", everyone thought that Ali would get murdered by Foreman. But Ali
saw things differently; he thought like a champion, talked like a champion and
was the true champion. He won by knockout in the 8th round in one of the
greatest fights of all time.
My point is that you need to have the right attitude
and frame of mind if you want to achieve CEO-like success. Basically, you need
to think like a CEO from day one. Once you learn a job, it becomes fairly
simple. Thus if you learn the job you aspire to, it will be much easier to get
because it will have become more simple in your mind (and in practice).
Most people
will not become CEOs until much later in their careers, if at all. Furthermore,
you don't need to become the CEO in order to be successful. However, you do
need to think like a CEO in order to become someone powerful in this world.
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