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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Leigh Bailey
February-March 2014

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Are you ready for a CEO?

The founders must transition from working in the business to working on it.

If your company is at this critical stage now or you anticipate it soon, you need to answer this important question: Are you ready for a CEO that may not be you, the founder? Your answer depends on several logistical and personal considerations. Let’s look at the primary ones.

The signs

Take a gut check. How much time are you spending on things you like to do?

How much anxiety do you feel around things you should be doing to build the business that you don’t have time or desire to address? Do you increasingly believe you are pulling the organization along by yourself as opposed to the organization working collectively toward a common goal?

Not every founder aspires to be among the Fortune 1000, but every founder desires to increase profits and provide a future for employees. As a company grows, it requires leaders to communicate the grander vision and oversee corporate-wide strategy and benchmarks to make it possible.

If you prefer making the product or service better rather than stepping into the CEO role of envisioning growth and strategy, honestly consider if you are the best person to lead your company to the next phase of growth.

Founder as CEO?

It’s not impossible: Founders can step into the CEO role.

It will require more honest assessment of the strengths and skills required in a CEO, and whether or not the founder has them or can develop them. Once the CEO job description is clear—a description for what is needed going forward, not what the founder’s role has been—an even more important personal question is: Does the founder want this role?

If the founder loves sales or customer solutions, for example, these responsibilities may diminish in the CEO role in order to focus on the company’s vision, strategy, budget, risk management and market trends. Being a CEO is not about taking on more hours, as we’ve seen some founders attempt. It’s an entirely new role.

If there is more than one founder, consensus needs to be reached on who of the founders will be CEO and how final decisions are made. This often means a process that includes founders’ input and a CEO who has final say in order to move decisions forward.

It only works with a clear understanding that this protocol must be upheld regardless of the decision. The CEO as final vote or veto, per se, in leadership discussions requires the utmost trust and agreement among leaders to support decisions.

Hire a CEO?

Sometimes the founder determines that hiring a CEO will provide a stronger opportunity for growth.

This is an acceptable solution that comes with its own questions and challenges.You will need a clear job description for the CEO, again, based on what’s needed to move the company forward.

The description should include how the founder roles and other senior leadership roles will interact with the new CEO. The CEO, in essence, will become the boss.

Founders who retain a leadership or technical role in the firm will need to be comfortable stepping back from certain decisions.
Can you, as the founder, handle a level of uncertainty or risk in allowing another person to lead your business? This question should influence your CEO recruitment and hiring process.

The level of trust between founders, board members, other senior leaders and a new CEO must be extremely high to traverse the first 100 days of new leadership and beyond. We’ve all seen situations in which the new CEO could not leverage that trust, let alone the autonomy to move growth initiatives forward, resulting in a costly buyout and missed business opportunities.

Take a lesson from 2,500 of the world’s largest public companies. They’ve experienced first-hand that planning for the right CEO is far smarter than expensive hiring and firing that has dominated the news.

In 2012, planned CEO transitions made up 72 percent of all CEO transitions that year (up from 69 percent in 2011), according to global management consulting firm Booz & Company. By contrast, forced CEO transitions were at their second lowest levels ever at 19 percent.

Support the CEO

This issue of trust leads to the other critical piece of assessing readiness for a CEO: a senior leadership team.

Will the new CEO—be it the founder or an outside hire—have a senior leadership team in place with the right skills, strengths and attitudes to support and cascade initiatives throughout the organization, or will the team be built from scratch?

Be prepared to identify missing talent on the team. You may need new skill sets on the senior leadership team, which may lead to turnover. Not everyone is willing to change or develop skills to support a new kind of leader and vision.

The end goal is to make the right CEO decision for your company with the right job description and to get that right-fit leader in place. Then you as founder/CEO, or through the guidance of the new CEO, must help assemble and align the right senior leadership team to meet the demands of customers and your industry. This is a structure for growth.

Hiring a CEO as part of growth planning is as much an emotional process as a logical one, and requires a great deal of thought. Whether you are ready for a CEO or not, don’t ignore the question. Honor what you’ve built by considering all your options for the future leadership of your company.