7 Surprises For a New CEO

The sheer volume of external demands creates a tremendous drain on time and attention of a CEO that takes many by surprise.

How are you going to run the business when you are constantly schmoozing board members, preparing for shareholder meetings, speaking with stock market analysts, or attending industry events?

The key is to focus on leading the company by managing the context of the organization, rather than the daily operations. This involves providing a vision and game plan that tells people: This is how we intend to win in this business and a strong set of governing values that shape corporate culture.

Another key is to build a team of A players who you can count on to act consistent with these.

Surprise 2. Act like you are on stage all the time…because you are

The CEO is always sending a message in all their interactions, every minute of every hour of every day. Your words and deeds, however large or small and off the cuff, are instantly spread, amplified, and interpreted (or misinterpreted) by hundreds or thousands of people.

The issue for new CEOs is that they are often unaware of this (and unaware that they are unaware). Failing to say hello to an employee in the hallway can lead to hurt feelings that impact both attitudes and performance.

Personal behavior that is inconsistent with your vision and values can sink you, being vague with your comments about a new proposal at meetings can lead to your organization veering off course.

Saying “yes” to a proposal with your mouth, but conveying “no” with your body language can lead to confusion.

Surprise 3. Giving orders can result in paying a heavy price

As a new CEO, you may have an agenda you passionately want to accomplish and may be tempted to mandate it with or without support.

This is risky business as it probably won’t get implemented, and your ability to “govern” may come into question. It’s also dangerous to back change initiatives with some executive team members that the other executive team members are not aligned with.

In most cases, no decision should reach the CEO’s desk that he or she cannot enthusiastically ratify knowing “the team” is behind it.

Encourage executive team members to embrace new ideas, but at the same time, hash out dilemmas, deal with deal breakers, and create alliances. The CEO should be brought into the discussion only at strategic moments for feedback and support.

Surprise 4. It’s hard to know what is really going on

As a new CEO you will be given a huge amount of information about what is happening in the organization, but reliable information is surprisingly scarce.

Most of the information you get will, with good intentions, be filtered (distorted) to support the political (business) agenda of the people on the executive team.

As such, it’s important for a new CEO to gather pergent view or perspectives on the issues that matter. It’s a good idea to scan the horizon for sources of information that wouldn’t otherwise come across your desk or be heard at the usually meetings.

Practice MBWA. Hold court in the company cafeteria every day at noon. Seek out external gurus. Use Google.

Surprise 5. You are not the boss

You may have the title CEO on your business card, a big corner office, and people down the chain of command kow-towing to you left and right, but forget about any illusions you have about being the ultimate authority.

The fact is, it is your board who can fire you, rejigger your compensation, throw out your game-changing strategy, and make many other decisions (especially in an era of activist boards).

Previously, you may have been frustrated by having one boss, but today with your job as CEO, you may have 12 bosses, with little opportunity to either develop a personal relationship with them or little time to communicate in a way that they don’t feel uninformed or surprised.

A word to the wise: go out of your way to build a relationship with key board members as they will ultimately decide your fate. If you don’t do this, you may wake up one day and wind up unpleasantly surprised.

Surprise 6. You will be pushed to do things that risk the health of the company

One of the issues that CEOs often get caught off guard by is that their actions are often not judged by the board in terms of creating long term value, but on their effect on today’s stock price.

The fact that you have a product with game-changing potential in the pipeline or are planning an ambitious market launch into Asia is less interesting to stock market analysts who don’t know the company than the fact that you are missing earnings projections this quarter.

As a result, you may be push hard by the board or Wall Street to take your eye off the ball and cancel such projects to cut costs in the interest of today’s shareholders.

Your recourse is to convince the board that your goal is both long-term value creation and tweaking the stock price. This needs to be framed as a “both and” not an “either or” proposition.

Surprise 7. You are still only human

It’s very easy when you are in a position of power to bask in the illusion of self importance, omnipotence, and omniscience. This can lead you to being arrogant with employees, being seduced by bad deals in an effort to leave a legacy, or forgetting the importance of friends and family.

It’s very important to make an effort to stay humble, to ponder decisions and actions, to continue to listen to others and to seek input from people who can be honest with straightforward with you.

It’s also important to be able to admit to yourself the ego-bruising reality that the job may be more mentally, emotionally demanding than any you have ever had before. Build a team of people around you who you can confide in and who you can get help and support from.

If you run into any of these surprises and need a thinking partner, just give us a call and we can talk about it. Everyone needs someone to talk to who can give them another perspective or even help them to find their own answer.