Peter Sorgenfrei breaks down the CEO role into three parts: visionary setting direction, executioner driving operations, and public figure attracting talent and capital. These responsibilities shift as a startup grows, and the CEO's personal brand matters more in early stages than in established companies.
What is the role of the CEO? It's a topic that comes up on occasion because most people think what it means to be a CEO. They kind of understand the role. It's kind of like understanding what it means to be a dentist or a lawyer, even though, of course, there are great variations what a dentist does and a lawyer does, and similar with a CEO. So I think you can break it into 2 simple parts. Essentially, the CEO is the visionary. She has kind of the vision of what the company can be and should be in the future, right? They look out and they say, this is what we're going to do. This is where we're going to be in the future. This is the kind of company we want to be, a kind of product and service we want to deliver. So that's kind of the visionary aspect of the job. On the other side, she's also an executioner. In the beginning days of the company, it is very much her who is part of driving execution, right? She might actually be doing a lot of the things in the business that needs to get done in order for the company to grow and become more than it is at that time. And then as the company evolves, more people get involved, more stuff gets distributed to other people. The executional role of the CEO is then to make sure that the people working with her are empowered and able to execute along with her vision. So, when we think about what a CEO is, it's a lot of things obviously. But I think you can break it into a visionary and an executioner kind of role that changes over time. The last thing I want to mention or the additional thing I want to mention to those 2 is The CEO is the one that everybody watches, right? Whether it is people outside the company, whether it's people inside the company, investors, board members, potential hires, everybody's kind of looking to the CEO. And so, in the beginning, the CEO is also paramount in attracting the right kind of attention, the right kind of candidates, the right kind of capital, the right kind of of sort of partnerships because so much is hinged upon this person. Over time, that diminishes a little bit, but not as much as some of the other things. Actually, over time, it's still very much. So for example, let's, you know, I've written about Elon Musk before. When people think about Tesla, they think about, of course, the cars, but they also think about Elon Musk. Why? Because he's a larger-than-life personality. And you can agree and disagree with his business practices or his views or whatever it is that he does, but you associate him with the company. If I asked you now to mention the CEO of the biggest banks in your area or the CEO of the biggest supermarket chains in your area, the biggest CEOs of some other category, I think you would have a harder time doing that. And that's because most of startups and scale-ups are so closely connected to their the leader in the business. And so as a CEO, you have to think about that. You have to know that what you do, what you say, how you act, how people perceive you matters more to your business than if you ran a chain of supermarkets somewhere or if you ran a bank somewhere in the world. So visionary, executioner, and being aware that everybody is aware of you. Is something to keep in mind as you are in the role of a CEO of a company. This was another video of a topic that's of interest to many of you. As usual, if you want me to record videos on anything, you can always leave a comment or send me a message, and I'd be happy to elaborate on whatever is on your mind in one of these videos.
