Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Unlocking Success The Key Role of a CEO in Empowering their Team

21 Mar 2024 · 1 min

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Jason M. Lemkin advises CEOs (especially first-time CEOs) not to dominate board/investor/company meetings. The CEO’s role is to set the stage and enable VPs (Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Finance) to explain their goals, what’s working, and why targets were or weren’t met. If the CEO speaks more than 50% of the time in board/company meetings, Lemkin argues the CEO is doing it wrong and should aim to speak less than half the time so others can be heard.

Chapters

Number eight of the type of CEO that just undermines confidence in venture is the never hear from anyone elser. And a lot of first time CEOs make this mistake inadvertently in the early days. But the job of a CEO is not to talk 100% of the time to board members, to investors. It's to set the stage. It's to set the stage so that you can hear from your VP of Sales and your VP of Marketing and your VP of Product and your VP of Engineering and your VP of Finance on what's working, what isn't. So that they each have their own goals, that sales has its own goals, marketing has its own goals, product has its own goals. And hear why they made them and why they miss them. And if nothing else, if you have board meetings or investor meetings and you as a CEO are talking more than 50% of the time, you're doing it wrong. They should be talking more. Let them happen. Everyone's trying to learn from your team what's going on at the company. So at least try to talk less than half the time at board and company meetings.