The Expert CEO

With the nation’s attention on next week’s inaugural events, speculation around President-elect Obama’s agenda for his first weeks in office is the focus of presidential scholars and leadership experts alike.  Whether elected or appointed, every new CEO must gather information, understand challenges and opportunities, set priorities, and communicate with a variety of constituents during their first 100 days in office.  I’ve taken the helm more than a dozen times as a founder, “hired” CEO and interim CEO, and over the years I’ve developed a new CEO’s to-do list that’s proven effective in achieving these goals, which I’ll summarize below.

Executive-staff Interviews

• Listen carefully – Learn about their strengths, weaknesses and issues (you’ll also hear a lot about other members of the executive staff).  Try to ferret out names of others, lower in the organization, who are especially well-respected.  These latter individuals can be key to future organizational changes.
• Identify common themes – people, products, technology, etc.
• Go back and do it again, trying to organize your thoughts and interview points based upon what you learned the first time.

Short-term Budget/Cash Flow

• Understand the company’s short-term financial status – Cash issues will take priority over everything else if there are short-term problems.  If you have breathing room (or positive cash flow) so much the better.
• Focus on immediate actions, if necessary

Products

• Understand current offerings/programs/services.
• Get demos from current product managers.
• Identify key product priorities.

Customers

• Meet customers – listen to their concerns and priorities.
• Note: Make sure you do this after you’ve gained a basic understanding of the people, products and issues.

Keep an Open Door (and an Open Email Box)

• It’s amazing who will wander in and unburden themselves with issues and concerns.  This is a great source of information to cross-reference against executive-staff interviews.

Communication 

• Communicate frequently and often with investors, customers, board members and employees.  It goes without saying that all of these stakeholders are nervous and anxious for information from a new CEO.

President-elect Obama has had 11 weeks to prepare, and as he takes the helm, he’ll be employing some of these very same techniques.  For example, we can already see his focus on budgets and cash flow, though, unlike any of us, he can “print money” to overcome it (in the short-term).  And he is focused on taking the immediate actions he believes are necessary to remedy the problem.  Like any CEO, he needs to persuade various constituents to support his efforts.  Regardless of our political leanings, the nation needs Obama to succeed, so let’s hope his “getting started” list stands him in good stead.