Becoming an Intentional CEO
If you’ve found yourself in the role of Accidental CEO, you’re likely floundering a bit. You play nearly every role in your growing business, doing tasks you never wanted: hiring, firing, bookkeeping, marketing, sales, product development, personnel management, client management, project management, and on and on. You’re trying to do too much and there’s never enough time. Overwhelm, frustration, and burnout have become familiar feelings.
This is not what you want your life to be! Nor is it what you want your business to be.
Realizing you’re in a stuck spot is the first step toward becoming an Intentional CEO.
In this blog post, I want to show you what it means to be an Intentional CEO. More importantly, I want you to envision yourself in that role. Because I believe you can be.
What would it look like if I became an Intentional CEO?
Pause for a moment and imagine how much better you’ll feel once you figure out your vision for the future, both for your life and for your business.
How much more smoothly your company will run. How much quieter your mind will be. How aligned your life and work will become.
You open the door to becoming a successful small business leader by taking the following initial steps.
First, an Intentional CEO envisions where they want to be. There are many details to figure out, but essentially you’ll need to create a vision of:
What you want your business to be.
What you want in your life: accomplishments and the experience of life you want to have.
How the business enables your life — not the other way around.
As an Intentional CEO, you must also figure out the beliefs and expectations that you hold dear. These are the values that define your life and your work.
As we work together, we will work to clarify your values, including:
• Core values that drive your personal life.
• Core values that drive your business.
• The importance of sharing these core values with your team.
Once your vision and values are clear, you create a plan. A strategic plan and an operational plan that will guide you to knowing who to hire, who to fire, and what to delegate, while growing your business.
With vision and plan in mind, the final step is execution of the plan and modifying the plan as required to keep it fresh, motivating, and working towards your vision.
To summarize, the steps are: 1. Clarify your vision and values, 2. Create a plan. 3. Execute on the plan.
Short and simple, right? Ha! This is tough work, but I know you can handle it. With a bit of guidance and focus, you can figure this out. If we work together, we’ll likely build in a milestone goal such as a sabbatical of a month or two for you sometime in the not-too-distant future to keep you excited.
What are the characteristics of an intentional CEO?
My goal is to help you become an Intentional CEO — to get you to the point where you can effectively:
1. Hire and then grow the right people that align with your company’s values.
2. Mentor leaders within your team to take on more responsibility and mentor others in your company themselves.
3. Focus on the highest and best use of your time - where you’ll have more energy and engagement and avoid burnout.
4. Build an enterprise that has you working on the business, but not in it. With the caveat that Intentional CEOs sometimes work in the business in roles performing work that is the highest and best use of their time, and increases their energy and fulfillment of their lives.
5. Implement policies and processes so you don’t need to make every decision.
6. Plan, measure, and make corrections to the business using metrics vs. emotions.
7. Develop your business’s short-term operational plan, as well as a long-term strategic plan.
8. Understand what you know and don’t know — and use these insights to benefit you and your business.
9. Become aware of your blind spots and then overcome them.
10. Seek effective mentors and coaches to keep evolving into ever greater possibilities.
This is where you’re headed! I’m here to help you break down each of these characteristics into work you can manage.
Over the next weeks, we will dig deeper into each of these Intentional CEO characteristics. Stay with us to learn more about the process of tapping into and honing these skills.
Are you an Accidental CEO desiring to be more intentional and break out of the day-to-day stress and grind? Let’s turn your hard work into intentional growth, both professional and personal. Contact me to find out how change is possible.