The Most Dangerous Job: Life as a CEO
Here’s my favorite quote that sums up how difficult it is to be a CEO:
The predicament that you are in is probably all your fault. You hired the people. You made the decisions. But you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. — Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things
I spend a fair amount of time on Quora, and I recently saw this from someone asking about what it’s like to be a CEO:
“It seems like they just go around, making sure everything is operating in order. They don’t actually have to solve technical problems etc. themselves.”
It got my hackles up, and here’s why:
CEOs solve some of the hardest problems like:
· What do we make?
· Who do we sell it to, and how do we reach them?
· How can we stand out from everyone else that sells the same thing?
· Who do I hire?
· How do we earn enough money to keep the lights on and the team employed?
· …and my personal challenge: What’s next?
When we don’t have the right answers, our companies get stuck. Our best people leave, or worse, we run out of money and must fire our staff. When our products don’t sell, our competitors beat us, and our employees don’t like their jobs, we have to figure out what to do next.
But what do CEOs actually DO?
We talk to a lot of people, make a lot of phone calls, and send a lot of emails.
We lie awake at night, sweating and afraid, searching for ways to make payroll, finding the words to fire our friends, and wishing for someone to tell us the right answers.
We make a lot of decisions. Right ones. Wrong ones. Easy ones. Hard ones. Decisions that lift us up, create jobs and grow companies. Decisions that ruin lives, destroy wealth and haunt our dreams.
We hire people and organize teams so everyone can focus on work they’re best at, feel challenged, enjoy their jobs, and provide for their families.
We push, negotiate, encourage, reprimand, engage, piss off, distract, motivate, and mentor.
The best of us, the CEOs that end up taking their companies and their employees to amazing places, do one thing above all else. They carry on. They take all the good, all the bad, and they drive their company forward day in, and day out, year after year.
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