What I Have Learnt From My First 100 Days As CEO

Clicked by yours truly

Earlier this year in April, I took over as the CEO of a 750 people organization. I have been part of this group for 4+ years and was specifically in a shadow mode for about 10 months. Having had this advantage I was able to anticipate large parts of the role. However, there were a number of things that still came up as serious learnings. Here, I have converted the learnings into themes. For anyone in middle management and looking to go on and lead large teams, this might be helpful.

100 days at the helm of a large team has taught me the below in a very short while. These first 100 days have been a humbling experience already and I hope to continue learning as I take the organization forward.

Some of the themes that I will carry with me from this experience:

The buck stops here

You have always read this phrase, mostly on motivational posters. You know what it means through various parables. This role is where the idiom takes a new life and becomes real.

• The first thing that strikes when you take up this role is that the buck actually stops at your desk. There is no one that you can turn to for a decision. Every decision that is referred to you has to be acted upon and closed at your desk. While guidance is available and can be sought, the actual responsibility is very much yours.
• Since the buck stops here, decisions that might have been a flip of a switch, become weightier and you tend to deliberate more on each decision. Though most of these might be two-way doors, still the weight tends to slow down decision making. Therefore, it is super-important to be self-aware of where you are slowing down on decisions. This also makes it doubly important to delegate decision making through the right mechanisms, so you are able to review decisions and add value by bringing in an additional perspective where possible.

Leverage

This is a theme I have been noticing for a while now and have already written about. As you grow in an organization the words you use become more important and the blast radius of your outpourings widens.

• Because of the role you play, there are people watching and listening to everything you say. There are interpretations attached to your words at times and you need to be aware of these potential interpretations. Especially in large meetings, you need to watch your words more than normal.
• Your opinion is held in esteem by those around you. Make sure to offer it with the same weight that your audience attaches to it. It is very likely that someone in the team might decide to prioritize a task, based solely on your comments. Therefore, you need to make sure that the leverage you have in the team is always utilized for the right priorities at an organisational level.

Organization priorities

The role automatically gives you visibility to things that are happening across the entire organization. This puts you in an unenviable position of making trade-off decisions. Sometimes, the information or reasoning is not shareable but the decision needs to be taken.

• You have visibility to multiple teams and their individual priorities. There will be times when you will need to make a tradeoff between teams and this might be a scenario where the information might not be democratic. You will need to shoulder the weight of taking org level priority decisions which might seem biased in the short term to some teams, as the priorities play out.

Letting go and managing through your team

As your responsibility areas increase, the ability to be directly involved in each decision and detail reduces drastically. You will need to figure how to delegate effectively and to interpret when you need to go deep and when you need to be operating at a higher level.

• With the number of businesses that are part of your responsibility, it is not possible to remain deep in each business. Though at times you might want to get deep into a particular business you will need to stay back. Especially in situations where your previous associations will automatically make it easier for you to dive deep, you need to consciously pull back and let the team handle it.
• You will need to trust your leaders to manage their business and surface key issues or hotly debated topics for your attention. You will need to enable them with the trust that they can run their ship independently, at the same time give them confidence that they can reach out for guidance if needed. This is a fine line and I still need to learn how to walk this line well.
• Weekly and monthly reviews are the only windows of assessing organization health and of making sure that things are on track. Make sure to strengthen these and go really deep during these reviews.

People Decisions

This is when your ability to manage people and make sure they are pulling their weight in the organization comes to the fore. There is no option but to be tough on people. If you are not, then you are being unfair to those who are working hard and taking initiative.

• Your team is watching you and looking at how you will handle the tough people discussions. You will be faced with these at some point for sure. You need to prioritise the organization’s long term needs over all other considerations. You will need to have tough conversations with people early on. This helps both the individual and the organization.
• It is always the right thing to do. Postponing the tough conversations sends wrong signals across the organization and can make a problem fester. The worst thing that can happen is people lose faith in your ability to solve the problem and vote with their feet. You will always lose good people if you can’t tackle the poor performers.

Transparent Communication

I have observed many leaders hold back communicating the reasons behind decisions to larger teams. My own principle is to be as transparent as possible. People are mature and can understand the outcomes better if you explain the reasoning behind the decision. Communicating directly across layers of the organization will enable two-way communication. There are things you will learn about how the teams work together only if there is two-way communication.

• Communicate with the larger organization directly. Be available for the team to talk back with you. Win their confidence by being open and then by closing the loop on the communication with them.
• If someone brings up a serious issue, be sure to take action. Along with taking action, it is also important to communicate about it. This will instil confidence in you as a leader.

In the current work from home set-up it becomes doubly hard to communicate across levels. There are no more cooler conversations. Until we have those back again, we will need to find other ways to have the conversations. The lack of opportunity does not reduce the importance of the conversations.

Setting the vision and following through

This is probably what most CEO memoirs talk about and there are reams written about it. It is definitely an area you will need to give explicit attention to. You will need to actively work on building the vision and communicating it with clarity. Communication happens through both, your words and your actions.

• The organization will take its short, medium and long-term directions from you. You will need to proactively set the vision and follow through with actions that make a difference. You will need to set the agenda and make sure the vision is available to the whole organization and you are able to galvanize everyone behind the vision. Communication is key here as well.

It has only been 100 days and I already feel like I have travelled a long way. The way forward promises to be filled with excitement, tough decisions, mundane metrics and innovative problem-solving. Whatever happens, the learning promises to go on.