Business Owners Should Act Like CEOs, Not Employees
Business Owners Should Act Like CEOs, Not Employees
by Jonathan Goldhill
As a business owner, you should be working "on" the business. You should be focusing on your company's purpose, direction, strategy, structure, systems, people, goals, and accountability processes.
Your goal as an owner is to design and shape a business that serves you and works independently from you - a business that is systems-dependent and not owner-dependent. You want a business that runs nearly on autopilot and spits out cash. Instead of shuffling papers or doing the bookkeeping, spend time trying to make your company different, better, more profitable and more systems-oriented. Like a business architect, try to shape your business to satisfy your vision, dreams and needs.
To gain Greater freedom, fulfillment and financial success, you must function as a leader instead of as a doer. As a leader, you need to be more strategic, long-term focused and less tactical/technical, day-to-day fixated. If you don't focus on the entire business, no one else will. It will just drift or run aground. So how do you stop thinking and acting like an employee or technician and more like an owner? Here are seven steps to consider seriously:
First, you should change the metaphor in your head for what it means to be an owner. Regardless of your industry or size of your business, start viewing yourself as a chief executive officer (CEO), not an employee. Instead of seeing yourself as a role player, see yourself as the head coach or the director, conductor, facilitator, or captain.
Bigger than you
To help with this mindset transformation, start referring to yourself as CEO. Put it on your business card, stationary, nameplate, etc. Using the term CEO will force you to see your company as an entity above and beyond yourself, as a separate and valuable asset that needs to be professionally managed and optimized. You are not the business and the business is not you. Spend time and energy helping to build, improve and optimize this asset. For example, focus on how to grow sales, expand your competitive advantage, and increase your calue to customers.
Consider that as CEO, you get paid at least the equivalent of $200 an hour to professionally manage this separate entity and valuable asset - your business. Ask yourself before you touch any task, "Would a CEO do this?" Or ask, "Is this task worth me doing at a cost of $200 an hour?" Don't spend a dollar's worth of time on a dime decision or task. Elevate your vision, thinking and tasks. Instead of asking, "How can I do a given task", start asking yourself "Who else can do this task?" Learn to delegate often.
If you truly buy into your role as a CEO, you should be willing to give up the urgent, less important, low-value tasks you routinely handle. Realize that 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your talents and activities. Delegate the 80 percent of your activities that only produce 20 percent of your results. Stop doing the wrong kind of work. CEOs should think, lead and delegate - not handle trivial matters.