Five priorities for startup CEOs as the business grows

I first wrote about this subject after hearing Russell Buckley speak at a conference in 2016. His talk prompted me to think about where a startup CEO should put their attention.

Returning to the article now, I would frame the priorities differently. The five below reflect my own perspective, informed by building businesses and working with founders.

A CEO can be involved in almost everything, particularly early on. But involvement is not the same as making a useful contribution.

As the business grows, part of your job is deciding what needs your attention, what belongs with someone else and what should stop.

These five priorities are a useful starting point.

1. Understand the cash position and the choices ahead

Know how much cash the business has, what it has committed to spend and when money is expected to arrive.

You do not have to prepare every calculation yourself. You do need to understand the information well enough to make decisions and recognise when you need financial advice.

Ask what happens if sales arrive later than expected, a customer pays slowly or a planned cost increases. Make those possibilities visible before they become urgent.

If the business needs funding, consider the options early enough to make a considered choice. Investment is one route. Depending on your circumstances, growth through customer revenue or a different pace of spending may be more appropriate.

Keep the team’s plans connected to the resources available. Hiring, product development and sales targets should be based on assumptions you can explain and review.

2. Stay close to customers and the value you deliver

As a company grows, it is possible to spend more time talking about customers than talking with them.

Make room to hear what they are experiencing. Understand why they buy, why they stay and why they leave.

Look beyond encouraging feedback. What are customers actually using? What do they return for? Which problems remain unresolved?

This does not mean personally attending every customer meeting. Build ways for the team to share useful evidence and make sure difficult feedback reaches you.

You also need to help the business choose. A large customer request can be attractive while pulling the product or service away from its intended direction.

Ask whether an opportunity fits your priorities, whether you can deliver it well and what accepting it would displace.

3. Build a team that can take responsibility

Your business needs people who can make decisions and carry work forward without everything returning to you.

Start by being clear about the outcomes, responsibilities and authority attached to each role.

Where something is missing, assess whether the answer is recruitment, development, outside support or a change in how the work is organised. A new hire will struggle if the underlying expectations remain unclear.

Make time to support the people already working with you. Discuss progress, give useful feedback and address difficulties while there is still room to act.

Look at your own behaviour too. If you ask people to take responsibility but regularly override them or reclaim their work, they may learn to wait for your answer.

Your contribution changes as others become more capable. You may need to spend less time solving individual problems and more time creating the conditions for the team to solve them.

4. Set direction and make the necessary decisions

People need to understand what the business is trying to achieve and what matters now.

Translate that direction into a manageable set of priorities. Explain the reasoning, including the trade-offs you are making.

A long list of goals can leave every team believing its work is urgent. Help people see which outcomes come first and what can wait.

You will sometimes need to decide with incomplete information. Be clear about what you know, what you are assuming and what would cause you to reconsider.

Seek perspectives that could change your understanding. Then make the decision, explain it to the people affected and follow through.

When decisions repeatedly stall, examine why. Is the responsibility unclear? Is information missing? Are you avoiding a difficult conversation?

The delay itself has consequences, even when nobody has explicitly chosen to wait.

5. Pay attention to your own capacity and development

The business may ask something different of you at each stage.

Work that once felt natural can become less central. Responsibilities involving people, uncertainty and competing expectations may take up more of your time.

Notice where you need to develop and where you need support.

That could mean learning to delegate, becoming more comfortable with disagreement or understanding a part of the business you have previously left to others.

Take your capacity seriously. If the role depends on you being constantly available and working longer whenever something changes, examine what needs to be redesigned.

Make room for thinking, recovery and conversations where you do not have to present yourself as having everything under control.

Persistence matters, but so does recognising when an approach is no longer working. You need enough perspective to question your own decisions as well as support the team through theirs.

Use the priorities to review your week

These responsibilities will not take equal amounts of time every week. Circumstances will change what needs attention.

Use them as a check rather than a rigid schedule:

• Do I understand our cash position and the decisions it requires?

• Am I hearing enough about the customer experience?

• Does the team have the clarity and support to act?

• Which decision or priority needs my attention?

• What do I need to change about how I am working?

Then compare your answers with your calendar.

If the most important work has no space, decide what you will move, hand over or stop. If the same issues keep returning, explore what is sustaining them.

Keep reviewing what the business needs from you

There is no single version of the CEO role that fits every company.

Your stage, team and circumstances will shape where you contribute most. What matters is noticing when your habits no longer match the work the business needs you to do.

You may need to let go of something you enjoy, learn an unfamiliar skill or have a conversation you have been avoiding.

If you would value space to work through your priorities and how you want to lead the next stage of your business, explore working with me through founder coaching and mentoring.

Cheers,

Duncan