EP19: High performing CEO

In Demand: How to Grow Your SaaS to $1M ARR and Beyond

What are the four traits that separate the highest performing CEOs from their peers? In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the decision-making and approaches great CEOs use to consistently generate results.

Here’s the link to the article discussed in todays episode: https://hbr.org/2017/05/what-sets-successful-ceos-apart

TL;DR:

• 2:24 - What set's successful CEOs apart from their counterparts?
  • Deciding with speed and conviction
  • Engaging for impact
  • Adapting proactively
  • Delivering reliably
• 3:08 - Deciding with speed and conviction, for a CEO it is more important to make good decisions fast than to make great, but slow, decisions.
  • You almost never have perfect information, so you will always be making a decision with uncertainty
  • Wrong decisions are usually better than making no decision at all
• 10:30 - When you are struggling to make decisions in a team, a CEO needs to be able to make decisions with conviction and be able to get their team onboard.
• 12:00 - Two good questions to ask yourself in the decision-making process are:
  • What is the impact if I get it wrong?
  • How much will it hold up other things if I don't move forward on this?
• 13:50 - It's also important for a CEO to know when a decision should be made by someone else. A CEO doesn't have infinite energy, so they can't be responsible for all decisions. Often it is better for the CEO to guide and coach others on making the decision.
• 19:59 - Engaging for impact is about how do you align your resources and how to you ultimately plan and create paths to execute. It means that you as CEO are aware of the challenges you are facing and that you've got the right people on board to address those challenges.
• 25:00 - CEOs that engage for impact are not afraid of conflict. They dive head first into solving contentious problems if it will affect the company.
• 27:55 - Adapting proactively may be a lot more important for a large company, but even at the early stages of a SaaS business, it is important for a CEO to understand the changes that are taking place in the company and marketplace. A way to think about this is how are you filling the time you have with thought-provoking information or insights that you can use to act in new or different ways?
• 30:45 - When you're making the transition from founder to CEO, it is a great time to conduct structured research about your customers.
• 34:45 - Delivering reliably is not about hitting home runs every time, but equally importantly, being able to learn lessons from the strikeouts and losses. A great CEO is constantly learning from what is not working well and is also able to have grace for themselves and others when results are not perfect.
• 39:45 - What makes a high-performing CEO?
  • They are able to decide with speed and conviction
  • They are able to engage for impact
  • They are able to adapt proactively
  • They are able to deliver reliably
• 40:00 - Book recommendations
  • How to Decide by Annie Duke
  • Traction by Geno Wickman