Your Role as CEO is to be Replaceable

The role of CEO requires a blend of experience and specialised skills, and whilst often financially rewarding, it can also be a very solitary position at times. You are no doubt a leader who is creative, adaptable, inspiring, and open to new ideas. You have been able to direct your organisation towards success by exercising great leadership and making decisions that others can respect. Or, it’s possible that you created the business in the first place, making you the one with the greatest understanding of where you’ve been and where you are headed.

Whatever your skills and background, they are unique to you as a person and cannot be found in any other leader, no matter how high or how far you search.

However, it is essential to keep in mind that the activities you choose to dedicate your time to are not the primary focus of your responsibility as a leader. The strategic endeavours that go into running a business may result in lengthy task lists that cover everything from administrative duties to marketing to business growth. As the CEO of a business with these types of responsibilities, it’s essential to examine how you best utilise your time. Your time is your most valuable asset, and how you choose to use it is critical in order to achieve business growth.

Your responsibility as CEO is not to check items off a list; rather, it is to ensure that you are easily replaceable.

Work on the business, rather than in it

Every year, make a list of the 10 activities that take up the most of your time and ask yourself, “Am I the perfect candidate for this position, or is there someone else who understands this more than I do, has more expertise, or can implement this even better than I can?” After that, choose the primary activities that use the most of your time and begin looking for a capable leader either inside or external to the organisation who might assume the responsibilities of a full-time post. By following this approach of creating leadership teams who are subject matter experts, your organisation can expand through the correct allocation of time, skills and expertise.

When a CEO takes on many different roles, there is no time for the development of best practices as the process is designed to work around the CEO’s schedule. You won’t be able to expand your business until you start treating the essential aspects of running it less like a series of tasks and more like habits and procedures you do regularly. In order to relieve yourself from some of these obligations, you will need to say good riddance to your ego and your need to control everything, as well as enhance your level of trust and your level of commitment to capable people. Even if your current cash-position suggests there is no means for hiring these jobs, be assured, the benefit will far transcend the risk in this situation. Only when you are working on the business rather than working in it, can you reinforce and improve an organisation by diversifying skillsets, trusting in others and sharing duties among other and sometimes, even stronger executives than you.

Make your business successful run itself

You, as the Chief Executive Officer of an organisation, should probably question in which areas you provide the greatest value. For each of the hats that you wear, whether you are working on new business development, marketing, culture, or future vision, it may be worthwhile to examine whether you are actually performing those roles in a way that significantly levels up your business or if you are actually preventing your team from producing impactful results for your clients. This can be done regardless of whether you are working on new business development, marketing, culture, or future vision.

To clarify, a successful business should not be dependent on its CEO.

Even if the CEO does throw a “leadership shadow” over the company that may have an effect on culture and innovation, the CEO shouldn’t be responsible for the most important aspects of growth; that should be left to the specialists (and sooner rather than later). This is especially true for service-based agencies, which often undergo transformations as a result of changes in client landscapes brought about by shifts in market conditions and trends as well as by the introduction of new agency products produced by your organisation.

Change your growth strategy from incremental to exponential

The prospect of exponential expansion may be both exciting and unsettling for executives of organisations. But expansion does not always have to be exhausting. A rapidly expanding organisation will benefit from prudently planned incremental transformation initiatives. The key to successfully navigating this transition is scalability, and scalability has its origins in thinking.

If you simply hire from inside your organisational chart, you restrict the number of new faces and new ideas you have access to. Although there are a number of benefits associated with recruiting and promoting from within an organisation, it is necessary to recruit from outside the organisation in order to access the extensive talent pool and experience that may be lacking. Scalability is directly correlated to diversity, and making sure that you have the appropriate people in the right roles is an investment that will provide you with a rapid return on your money.

If you are the Chief Executive Officer of an agency, for example, and you are still pitching clients, running new business, handling finances, developing operational efficiencies, planning events, and performing other critical responsibilities, you should give up at least two or three of those responsibilities each year and hire experts in their fields instead. Make them the leaders and owners of these divisions of the company, and treat them as if they were already in these roles. They need your help, but you also need to stay out of their way. It is vital to refrain from thinking of this as a cost and instead consider it an investment. Your capacity to expand the scope of your leadership to include a greater emphasis on development and culture requires that you make better use of the time and space in your head that you have available.

Become replaceable

In the end, being replaceable does not mean that you should actively seek to remove yourself from the workforce self-employment or becoming a consultant. It simply implies that you shouldn’t have two important issues on your plate at any one time. Taking on this method will provide you with flexibility as well as development that is manageable. This way of thinking is not exclusive to CEOs; other leaders who join your organisation should adopt it as well. These leaders should concentrate on the areas in which they excel and look for new opportunities by using the same strategy of shedding.

Businesses get a much-needed boost of oxygen and fuel for their innovation, culture, and creative fires when they bring in outside specialists. It is also a means to tenfold your company, which is something that often seems unattainable. When implemented as a strategy, it results in more simplified branding and better concentration than any one individual could ever be able to deliver whilst steering the ship single-handedly. It is also great tactic to increase the morale, performance, and resilience of your company, to place investment in professionals and promoting a team ethos.