The Perfect CEO

The Perfect CEO knows their job is to support the company, not to have the company support them. A good CEO keeps the company going, a great CEO makes the company want to grow.

I learned as a Navy Officer, that a good leader can be easily replaced by another person. A bad leader makes themselves indispensable, leaving the crew in shambles when they leave. A great leader works hard to make it easy for themselves to be replaced.

Any smart person can use a support system under them to find facts, make decisions and as a team, do work that no single person can do. It is disingenuous to take credit for the whole team, but that's so often the case these days. No person is worth 100 times the lowest employee. If a person at the bottom isn't worth having, get rid of them, don't just pay the person at the top more because they won the lottery. The CEO is the chosen decision maker, not rule by committee. They need to make critical choices, and they should make mistakes fast, but correct faster. Not just sit in the chair and suck up the revenues, paying a board to keep them in place.

A good CEO looks for people who will make the team stronger. Not just people who will support them. A Perfect CEO knows that very few gravestones say "They spent too much time with their family and not enough time at work." Your parents will tell you that, but history won't. Then your parents will ask why you don't visit more often. The best CEO's make sure their employees have time for vacation, not just the executives.

A good CEO knows their customers and listens to them. A perfect CEO filters and only listens to the 10 percent of the great ideas that customers will freely offer, because trying to do everything perfect, guarantees that nothing will get done well.

I've been an Okay CEO of a tiny company that doesn't matter to anyone except the IRS and State Board of Equalization. They and my dozen employees got more from 20 years of modest success, and $40,000,000 in sales, contracts and services, than I have as the purported leader of this motley crew. Our core team has been with us for closing on 20 years, so now that we have well over 100 years of technology bottled up, we are about to spin-out with a new company. That new company will be worth more than we are, but only if we can find a Great, or even Perfect CEO for the new spin out.

Of course the better CEO will have to raise money, talk to government agencies and partners, and stand toe to toe with Billion Dollar partners and not blink. Something I've always found it difficult to do. They will have to explain that saving lives is more important than saving profits, but you can't stay in business if you go out of business.

The best technology people are rarely people persons, and vice versa. So my role is shifting from running a business, to supporting this Perfect CEO, because changing the course of history is easy. Getting History to not just change it back to the status quo, is beyond me.

If you happen to know of a Perfect CEO, or someone ready to at least try, let me know. I'm looking.

Oh and if you are curious, come by and I'll show you what we are up to.