Re:Ending the cult of the CEO
by harryh on Monday April 24, 2017 @08:25PM
(#14189746)
Here are some decisions that you might be faced with when holding the CEO job at a 300 person company:
- The New York Times has just written an article about how your company mined user data and sold it in a nefarious way. But this sort of sale is critical to your business model. What do you do?
- You hired a VP of Sales 6 months ago who interviewed better than anyone you have ever met and came with glowing recommendations, but he has missed his quota for 2 quarters. Do you fire him or do you give him some more time?
- A competitor has, completely unexpectedly, launched a similar product as yours but is charging customers half the price. Your CTO doesn't know how they could be turning a profit at such a low cost. They're very quickly eating into your market share. How do you respond?
Obviously these situations would be far more nuanced than these 2 sentence descriptions and obviously you would get all sorts of opinions from employees & advisors but ultimately making these sorts of calls is the CEOs job. Making these decisions well is not easy and it can have a huge impact on the company.
- The New York Times has just written an article about how your company mined user data and sold it in a nefarious way. But this sort of sale is critical to your business model. What do you do?
- You hired a VP of Sales 6 months ago who interviewed better than anyone you have ever met and came with glowing recommendations, but he has missed his quota for 2 quarters. Do you fire him or do you give him some more time?
- A competitor has, completely unexpectedly, launched a similar product as yours but is charging customers half the price. Your CTO doesn't know how they could be turning a profit at such a low cost. They're very quickly eating into your market share. How do you respond?
Obviously these situations would be far more nuanced than these 2 sentence descriptions and obviously you would get all sorts of opinions from employees & advisors but ultimately making these sorts of calls is the CEOs job. Making these decisions well is not easy and it can have a huge impact on the company.