S. IMAMUL HAQUE

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It is going to be an extremely hard job. No amount of preparation or education is going to prepare you for what it demands. You will feel like quitting at so many instances. Don’t, just persist. It’s a lonely job. There will be no one who you can tell everything about your work. Uncertainty is the hallmark of entrepreneurship. You have no guarantee that you will last a year, at times a month and sometimes even a week. Learn to embrace this uncertainty. You will wake up crying at times. Don’t fret about it, deal with it. If you are married, your spouse will play a very crucial role. They are going to be the only person who you can tell everything. They can give you the third-person view to take unbiased decisions. They are going to be your rock when you are the lowest. Being a CEO is all about transitioning from doing everything in the early days of the company to delegating everything as the company matures. Key Responsibilities You are going to make a lot of decisions in the company. If you are overly careful in your decision making you will slow down the growth, if you are too impulsive you will end up taking the wrong decisions. Setting the vision and talking about it is your responsibility. You cannot crowd-source the vision from your team. You must listen to everyone but at the end you set the vision. You define the culture and most importantly you guard it. People will ultimately emulate what you do. As a founder-CEO it’s your number 1 duty to ensure that the company never runs out of money. CEO should always be involved in the product. You can go away from any other function but not product. The success of your organization depends on how well your team is equipped. No one comes knowing it all at the job, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you train everyone. Decision Making You will never have the complete information that you need to make decisions. Your gut/hunch will play a big role in such situations. It may sound counter-intuitive but gut-thinking can be developed. Great founders take right decisions not because they have all the information but because they have vast amount of knowledge. That’s what constitutes the gut-thinking. You will be wrong more often than you will be right. The trick is to detect your mistakes early, learn from them and never repeat them. You must stand by the wrong decisions you make. People will respect you if you are willing to accept your mistakes. Take time to explain your decisions. People around you need to know what is the thought process behind your decisions. Don’t fall in the trap of over-deliberation. Most of the times speed is more important than the right decision. You will always get time for course correction later. Good is better than best. There will be times when you are going to take decisions that nobody will believe in. If you have 100% confidence in yourself, go forward unabashed, because no one else has the full picture other than you. When taking strategic decisions, step out of your day-to-day operational work. Decompress completely. Swipe the board clean. Forget everything that’s going on currently. And then think about whatever you want to think. Think, how your future will change if you take this decision and not what benefit your present will get out of it. There will be some decisions that can significantly alter the direction of the company. You can’t always white-board a conclusion out of them. At times, you need to mull over them, you need to let serendipity happen. All good decisions seem obvious in hindsight because it’s easier to explain a chain of events, rather than predict one. Don’t mistake yourself in believing that you have found a pattern. For decisions like letting a misfit go, shutting down a product line etc. it’s always better to do it sooner rather than later. Culture You are the guardian of the culture. You define what is to be appreciated and what is not acceptable. If you don’t do it ardently you are ******* up the culture. It’s always easier to hire people who believe in your culture than to try and convince non-believers. If someone doesn’t fit your culture, don’t hire them no matter how good they are on skills. You have to speak, shout, repeat, chant, recite and roar about your culture. Culture becomes culture only when it’s spoken about all the time. There is no definition of what a good culture is. More than being Utopian it has to have universal resonance. Your culture is never set in stone. The basic tenets will be defined but the shape and form of culture will rapidly evolve as the company grows. A good culture must breed 2 things — respect for each other’s work and open communication. Leadership Soon you will realize the impact you can create through your individual contribution is meaningless when compared to the impact you can create by leading people. The best way to lead is to lead by example. A good leader tells you how it’s done, a great one shows you how.