What Do I Do?
My ever evolving role as CEO
I’ve got a weird job. As Lullabot has grown it has changed quite a bit. When we first started the company, I was a developer. I suppose I was also a designer — out of necessity really, because we didn’t have anyone else to do things like design a logo for us. I wouldn’t even have called myself an entrepreneur. I just saw great possibilities with Drupal and the community that surrounded it and I wanted to help bring that to the world.
I didn’t go to school for computer science or business management. I went to music school. The main thing that I learned at music school was that everyone was going to say that you couldn’t make it. I learned that there were thousands of other people with the same goals, many of whom were considerably more talented than me. I would never be able to play guitar faster than them. I also learned that as much as I tried, I would never gain any appreciation of jazz fusion music. I learned that the main thing I needed to do was be persistent and unique; to be engaged and try to learn as much as possible about the world around me. There was no single book that was going to tell me what to do. There was also no one that was going to “discover” me. Instead, I needed to create something individual, compelling, and undeniable. People might feel like they discovered it. They could feel like they stumbled onto it and in some way they owned it. But for me, it needed to be something that I was proud of — that I would want to discover if I were them.
I like inventing. I like solving problems. In fact, I get bored when things don’t change. I became an employer, an advocate for open source and Drupal (both because it bettered the world and because it kept my friends employed at Lullabot). I was a developer. I was a trainer. I was a consultant. I made stickers and t-shirts. I was a sales person. I managed projects. I configured servers. I became an expert in video production. I recorded endless podcasts. I became an expert in business finance and the US tax system (that was a painful lesson). I tried to build something discoverable and inspiring. And slowly I learned to manage people.
Lullabot did great things. We hired great people. They inspired me and I did my best to inspire them — to provide a vision and create a great company. But as we reached about 20 people, the stress and worry to do right by all these great people became exasperating. The thinking-and-planning part of the job was no longer a sideline. This became a new problem to solve. We hired and promoted so that we could have help with tasks like sales communications, resource planning, billing, and human resources.
These days I can always fall back on being an owner and co-founder. I sometimes fantasize about spending my days sitting on a beach with umbrella drinks. If I tried hard enough, I could probably even find some way to justify doing that. But I’m sure I would get bored very quickly and wish that I were back solving problems and kicking ass with all of the talented people we’ve hired.
About two years ago, I started a new mantra: “Replace yourself… often.” As I’ve read more business books, I’ve also seen this same concept as “Hire yourself out of a job.” It would seem like this mantra would head a person in the direction of those umbrella drinks. However, there will always be that inclination to want to be hands-on. I still want to program and do video production. But I realized that I simply can’t do all of it. At many companies, you see managers trying to micromanage as a way to remain hands-on despite supposedly moving into a more strategic position. I have sympathy for these managers, however it usually comes across as distrust and disrespect for those that they manage. Lullabot has many wonderfully talented people capable of managing themselves. It’s our job to provide the context and information for them to be successful.
But the truth is that “replace yourself” is just a concept — an ideal. It could also be restated as “You can’t do everything. Find people to do the things you’re doing. Then find other things that need doing.” And repeat. It’s a switch from working on the work to working on the company.
Unfortunately, the work that remains is sometimes the spread out pieces between the clearly defined roles and responsibilities of others in the company. My work can often feel like weird bits and pieces and the leftovers and misplaced things that no one else might be looking at. It can be things like legal wrangling on trademark issues, keeping an eye on Google Analytics for Lullabot.com, pushing along our app product Shoot, posting to social media to help hire talent, or having undefined meetings or lunches with others in the tech field to network or just pick their brains. A lot of my work consists of policy-based discussions and decisions around things like benefits, hiring policy and strategy, background discussions for client management and diplomacy, and generally trying to keep my finger on the pulse of the company.
My job as CEO is to dig around and find the things that others might not be thinking about — to keep an eye on the inner workings of the company and make sure we’re healthy. My job is also to keep an eye on the horizon and to be aware of both threats and opportunities that come with the inevitable climate changes in our industry. This can sometimes feel a little like paranoia as we try to read the tea leaves and prepare for possible future changes. But we try to inject as much optimism, hope, and creativity into this process as possible — trying to figure out how we can take advantage of opportunities to grow a better company, rather than just a bigger one.
As someone who started out very hands-on, this conceptual strategic management work can feel uncomfortable. It can be abstract, difficult to define, and difficult to verbalize. As such it can also feel like it isn’t real work. I can end a day feeling like I haven’t really done much other than read email and catch up with Lullabot’s intranet communications. Or I can spend several hours digging through the Internet exploring an idea or writing an article that ends up going nowhere.
There are several different metaphors that I use to describe the work that I do. There’s the ship’s captain metaphor which I alluded to above, watching the horizon, listening to the weather reports, and steering slowly toward opportunity and out of harm’s way. The other metaphor that I use is that of a fireman, sitting and waiting for the inevitable and often intense fire which will require his attention. Maybe I’m a ship’s captain whose boat periodically catches fire!
So I guess all of this is to say that my job is weird. Success in my job looks like the success of the company: stability, happiness, productiveness, and rewarding and fulfilling work. Failure in my job looks like surprise: finding the company in a situation which is unexpected or for which we we are unprepared.
Perhaps this whole post is a way of apologizing for not sharing more details of my daily work with Lullabot’s employees. But I’m going to try to keep posting larger pieces like the one you’re reading right now. I don’t want my work to be opaque. It’s often hard to verbalize the random bits and pieces of my work, but every so often they coagulate into a larger idea which, with a little effort, I can capture, arrange, and share.
