The Best Advice I Can Give a CEO

Do what only the CEO can do.

I’ve only reported to CEOs in my career – 10 people over 20 years. Here's the single best piece of advice I can give: You have a special role, and your job is to make things happen that only you as the CEO can.

Spend 90% of your time leveraging your title, network, experience, creativity, and vision. Don’t slow things down by meddling in day-to-day deliverables under the guise of being “hands on”. Basically if someone else you trust can do it well, you shouldn't, so you can do more important things.

That's it. That's the whole thing. Assemble experts, inspire them, get out of their way. Simple, right? Yet mastering this straightforward principle can completely transform how you lead your organization.

Imagine this, a true story:

It’s July, and the CEO has challenged us to hit the investor’s big goal by the end of the year. We must grow 150% MoM starting in August. That’s right, we had only six months to grow from a few hundred to a few thousand closed/won signups per month without raising CAC.

In B2B SaaS, this is.. not based in any form of reality – even successful programs take time to scale and tests typically temporarily raise CAC. Nevertheless, she persisted, and the team managed to double the rate in September and then 50% in October.

November was our super bowl, and we were preparing a big campaign. Incredibly, the CEO had brought us in a big new partnership – we were going to sit on the homepage of a heavily trafficked partner site for 2 weeks leading up to our big campaign! All he had to do was kick it off and help us get it over the line in time. We might not hit our big year-end goal, but this could get us past 70% – considered success by OKR principles.

There were assets to make and tracking codes to test, and we had to fit it in alongside our massive end of the year push. Aligned and harmonized, we were so confident that everything was going to work together to have a record month.

Instead of helping us get it all over the line, he micromanaged the marketing campaign copy, got distracted with designs for product, introduced two new urgent projects, asked us to be a vendor at a conference right during those projects, and then handed it off to his new chief of staff.

With all this going on, needless to say he never answered our many calls to get the partnership off the ground. We still managed to have a record month – but we were a lot farther away from the goal than we could have been.

Unfortunately, the conversations at the end of the year were “why didn’t you hit the goals?” when it should have been, “how could I have helped get this over the line? what was my role in our goal setting strategy?”

Now imagine these alternate true stories:

Our CEO got himself a speaking slot at a major industry conference by catching up with an old friend.

Our CEO got us case studies on every one of our vendors’ websites, showing our partnership and getting backlinks for PR.

Our CEO got us a major partnership pilot with a 1 year contract.

Our CEO got us a social media endorsement from a kids’ tv star.

Our CEO spoke with the district superintendent and agreed to a pitch.

Our CEO introduced mentors from the investors to the marketing team who got to ask them valuable questions.

Our CEO spoke to the vendors’ CEO and got us an even bigger discount off of our first year of services.

Why This Matters

Micromanaging is not “founder mode.” It’s an anxiety response that CEOs use to self-soothe, by controlling whatever they can – including how others work and what they’re working on. This behavior wastes time, breeds resentment, and can actually make or break your business.

The famous quote goes “most startups don’t die from starvation, they die from indigestion.” well my quote goes:

“Most startups die when they eat themselves from the inside.” - Adrienne Kmetz

You might be thinking “but I am the one with the vision, this is my baby.” Well your baby is growing up now, and unless you’re doing that umbilical cord sketch from In Living Color, you are going to want to evolve into a role focusing on growing that baby into a fully functioning supergladiator that can jump tall buildings in a single bound. This means learning to be comfortable with taking different paths to reach the same goal. IE. doing it differently than you would.

Lead it like a CEO and recognize many people will be “owning” the health of the baby now. Take this help so you can scale your most important strengths. I doubt you would put any of the things you’ve recently hired people to do - like design or copy - on your top 5 list of strengths, which is why you hired someone to do it. So give the background, the context, and the goals, then back off and observe and check in on the flywheel as it turns and grows.

Sounds a lot like trust, huh? Yes.

Just trust your team even if it’s uncomfortable

Here is the principle of trust: The same CEO that left us high and dry, was the same one that told all new hires they needed to “earn his trust.”

Actually.. It’s the other way around. You hired this person based on a litany of tests. I’m sure they ran the gauntlet to get hired! And you believed in their experience and expertise enough to hire them. So you must trust them to do their job, and now earn their trust and respect by doing yours. Which means delivering on your promises, just like a leader should.

So What Actually Belongs on a CEO's Plate?

Let's get specific about what only you can do:

1. Big picture: You're the one who needs to look up and out while everyone else is looking down and in. Share it by inspiring your team in the all-hands with what you’re learning and reminding everyone where we’re headed.

2. Building the A-Team: Nobody else can build and lead your executive team. Period. Getting the right people in the right seats – and making sure they work together effectively – then get out of their way.

3. Money calls: Major resource decisions investments, or killing expensive projects, these calls need time to carefully think through. Dedicate enough time for these thought and impact exercises so you have a complete picture of how big decisions affect every single person in your organization.

4. Cultural Blueprint: The rules apply to all leadership. When you consistently work late, or ignore the rules for yourself, your team sees that and it erodes trust. When you take real vacation time, that speaks volumes too. Culture flows from the top, whether you intend it or not. Hustle culture is toxic, sorry not sorry.

5. Key relationships: Board relationships, critical partnerships, major investors – these connections can be synergistic in many small ways. Ask your team what they need and then be brave and bold in asking your network for those things. Pair mentors when you can.

What You Need to Stop Doing

Here's the hard truth: most CEOs spend way too much time on things others could handle just fine:

• That weekly ops review? Your COO should own it.

• Staff issues two levels down? That's what HR and managers are for.

• Regular accounting meetings? Your CFO should be bringing you the highlights.

• Should we do X, Y, Z? If it’s not in the Roadmap, we don’t need to discuss it.

• Approving budget requests? Set the budget for the year based on departmental strategy then hand over processing to accounting.

• Micromanaging of any kind? Wrap it up into a monthly design, product, and copy feedback memo.

• A new project you just “have a feeling about”? Trust your team to prioritize it against other opportunities that have already been identified as good investments.

The Magic That Happens When You Let Go

When you step back from meddling, something amazing happens:

• Your leaders actually get to lead

• Decisions get made faster (because people aren't waiting for you)

• Your organization grows stronger (because others step up)

• You finally have time to think big (because you're not drowning in details)

• People just naturally feel psychologically more safe with peers, and the diversity of ideas that are shared can show that.

• You might actually become more self aware, observant, and learn something new.

Making This Work

1. Look at your calendar: Pull up last week's schedule. For each meeting, ask yourself: "Could someone else have handled this?" Be brutal with your answers. Change the color of those meetings and at the end, look at your week or month and see what % of your time you could get back.

2. Protect the time: Now, work with your people/HR team to re-work your meeting cadence and agendas so there is no overlap, what can be done async is shifted to that. Encourage your managers to do the same with their departments.

3. Set the team up for success: Don't just dump responsibilities – make sure people have the tools and authority they need to take things off your plate.

4. Invest in your team: Spend time developing your direct reports by giving context – the “why” – to your decisions, so they can make good decisions in the future. The better they get, the more you can trust them to take on.

5. Bring opportunities: Your involvement should help speed things up, bring an opportunity, save money, teach something super important, solve a mystery, unblock a big blocker, you get the gist. Don’t just ask for help and status requests. Help your people and they’ll help you.

The Tough Part

Here's what makes this so hard: it feels wrong at first. Many of us got to the CEO chair by being really good at solving problems. Stepping back from that can feel like you're not pulling your weight, or that it’s just faster if you do it this one time, or just… inertia.

You’re going to be tempted to say things like “I like to roll up my sleeves” or “I’m in founder mode”. Just don’t. Accept that you are struggling to delegate and be transparent about that. Build the muscle of trusting your team to do what you hired them to do.

Here's the truth: every time you do someone else's job, or you send something back for another round of edits that are not quite necessary, or you ask for a status report on something you shouldn’t be following that closely; you're not doing your job.

And nobody else can do your job – that's why you're the CEO.

I recommend reading “how to give your legos away” and then actually practice what it means to delegate.

It’s okay to go out treasure hunting

Your job isn't to know every single thing or be omnipresent. It's to be exceptional at the things only you can do and hire trusted experts for the rest. Some of this is based on your title as the CEO, leveraging it to get PR, and some of it is through your own network and experience. Bring back opportunities for your marketing, people, product, and sales teams, and while you’re gone they’ll be pushing ahead along the roadmap, ready to take advantage of the treasure you bring back.

Master this principle, and you'll not only become a better CEO – you'll build more loyalty and get more done.

Wanna be a unicorn CEO like this gal? Be the best unicorn you can be.