What did I learn by becoming a CEO

10 Years ago

Rewind my life to 10 years and there I was, thinking about a company that builds digital products. At that time, I just had two jobs on my resume and the rest became history.

Now that I look back, I couldn’t even imagine the struggle I had from writing code all day long to founding a company with 150+ employees. There in between, I had dream, I made heaps of blunders and received a lot of help from different people.

What I learned….

The hardest part for me was to give up all the control I had. I thought everything at the beginning was important. Though, we can’t be good at everything. As I grow older, I realized that it’s important to give up things with our own consent or else, a person won't excel and people related to him will suffer big time.

Hire C position people around you and get yourself reviewed at 360 degree after every 6 months. Obviously, one cannot correct everything about himself. Focus on fixing 3 to 4 things each year and tell your company and employees about it, it will build immense trust.

With the passage of time, you will realize that your time is either burned in meetings or in progressive discussions but practically, there isn't any real progress. However, you are working. Your part is to help people by conducting meetings and discussions. Don't feel like its non-productive. Embrace the mentorship and let it be fun for you.

Find inspiring mentors: Find someone who could become your source of motivation at your lows and keeps your feet on the ground in your highs. Most likely, they might have been a CEO or founder at some point of time or someone from your family members, so they could relate with your mental and emotional state. My wife, my mom and my past bosses were my continuous source of inspiration. But here is a catch - they wont give you a script, they will be there to guide you through your thick and thins.

Your mantra of life: Build a team that can work effortlessly even in your absence. In the long run, practicing this will make you less stressed. You must empower others and whenever you feel like losing it all, ask yourself what motivates you? $$, ego or power?

With power comes responsibility: Trust me, being at the top is lonely and majority of CEOs feel the same. You can’t be authentic and vulnerable as you would like. Find other CEOs and founders who will stick to you for casual dinners and open discussions. With whom you can share your problems and never hesitate from giving or getting a hug during tough times. It makes a lot of difference, trust me.

Take on tough and critical decisions by facing them head to head and never avoid or evade them. Avoiding confrontation slows down the company and work relationships are tend to go grey making your position and focus shaky. However, never attack people, shoot at the problems.

If decisions aren't coming from you, your pleasant relationship with employees may turn sour and they would even dislike you for not taking the ownership. “I am sorry, I screwed it up” are powerful words that might not fix the issue but sense of guilt often heals the bitter part.

Your job would become 10% talking and 90% listening: Initially, I was bad at practicing this and had to work harder at not poking my nose in people’s affair. After spending half a decade, I found the solution that was to write all the things down during a meeting. It made me more focused, a better listener and more observant of things that are shown to me in the meeting.

With the growth of organization, your intuition about the market and customers will grow at pace. Despite of empowering others, keep them in the circle of accountability. Your decisions should be made by following the facts and proofs rather than considering discussions and opinions. A tip here is, spend time with your employees to learn from them and to know the issues of grassroot level.

As you grow more, finding the truth becomes harder and it would prove to be one of the most important contribution from your side for the company. Dwell the truth before making a decision and make it a part of the company culture. I did this by continuously asking people about the ground reality or actual facts. Everyone is accountable and answerable in Cubix Inc, including myself.

Never let your mood ruin the meeting: Maybe, the meeting would be devastative but keep calm and know that people sitting in front of you might not have the context and may be, they feel stressed or excited to meet you.

Never focus on weaknesses when you can build strengths:  It’s always bothered me that CEOs spend efforts in fixing their own weaknesses. I think a more logical approach is to build out strengths and find team members whose strengths complement your own weaknesses. 

The verdict

Well, keep improving by working really hard. You can always plan a better future and it's no use of crying over spilt milk (past). Don't you ever give up, because when you take hard turns, great decisions, you always get to know about the values and principle you stand for and this makes your struggle worth it.