155: 3 Ways to Protect Your CEO Position in Your Design Firm

Leadership
Written By Michele Williams
3-ways-to-protect-your-CEO-position-in-your-design-firm.png

155: 3 Ways to Protect Your CEO Position in Your Design Firm

Each firm needs a CEO. A Chief Executive Officer. Perhaps, the position does not use that label – but the work of the CEO is still needed. On the podcast today we are going to look at the role of the CEO, why it is needed, and how to protect it no matter the size of your firm.

Topics Mentioned: 

  • CEO

  • Job responsibilities

  • Ownership

Listen to the Episode

Thanks for reaching out and letting me know how much you are enjoying these shorter educational podcast episodes. I know we don’t always have an hour to listen, and we want to gain new ideas and information as quickly as possible. If you have any suggestions or needs for future episodes, email me and let me know! 

Now -let’s jump into today’s topic. 

The role of CEO has historically been seen as the highest-ranking position or person in a company. Ultimately, the success or failure of a company rests on the shoulders of the CEO.  

It is easy when we first begin our firm as a solopreneur to not even consider that role. We are so busy doing the work of the business as the technician, that to even think of ourselves as CEO might feel pompous. In The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber he breaks down the three main positions in a company to be the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. Traction by Gino Wickman separates the role of visionary and integrator with visionary being a bit more CEO focused. In Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz the role of Queen Bee is mentioned and is very much a CEO type position. 

Each of these books and methods stresses the fact that someone must be at the helm guiding the business and being an ultimate decision maker. I am also a fan of The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack which has a more employee led business structure. But even then, someone still has to be in charge. I have thrown out a lot of books here – and there are hundreds more. At the end of the day, every business has someone listed as the owner or as the CEO. For most of us, we are that person. 

And from experience I can tell you this, if I don’t make note of what it means to be CEO or Visionary or Queen Bee in my own firm, the work of those positions can be easily forgotten, pushed aside or seen as non-pressing. My suspicion based on working with many of you is that you do the same. 

With that in mind – let’s talk about the 3 ways to protect the CEO position in your firm. And the reason we are protecting it is because it is important. It is necessary and it leads to growth in a company. Also, like having parents, having someone who has taken responsibility for the CEO role creates safety in the workplace. Imagine in a home where no one was the parent. We may have all seen examples of this in real life, and it is not pretty. Now imagine a firm with no one doing the important work of leading and guiding at the highest level. That leads to a company and culture of discord, confusion, and ultimately business anarchy if not established firmly and maintained. 

 

  Recognize the role of CEO in your firm. 

To even begin to protect the role, we need to recognize that the role and position exists. Now you might be asking – what does that mean? I believe it means making peace with the fact that while you may be doing some of the work as manager and technician in your company as many of us do – you also are the one guiding the company forward. This means that you need to set aside time to consider the future, work on guiding the firm and the team, building up your leadership skillset.  

 

Most of this work starts with how you think and your mindset of leadership. What type of leader or CEO do you want to be? Defining this will assist you in defining the responsibilities of CEO. But beware, whatever you setup as the CEO role, you or whomever is in that position must do. Take time to be thoughtful about your approach and how you want to ultimately lead and guide your team to future success. 

 Identify the responsibilities of CEO in your firm. 

Once you have identified the role of CEO in your firm and you have made peace with it being you or someone you have appointed, the responsibilities need to be defined. Often, the roles and positions of everyone in a firm are crafted with care, but the role of the leader is not. This is not healthy. I have suggested before that we do a self-reflected evaluation of our own work each year. We may even get input from our team – but we do need something to measure it by.  

 

Here are some of the responsibilities that may show on your CEO list: 

  • Managing overall resources of a company 

  • Being the face of the company 

  • High-level strategic decision making and planning 

  • Sets tone, vision, mission and culture of the organization 

  • Create a hiring plan 

  • Ensuring major processes are in place for success 

  • Assessing risk to the firm 

  • Creating an awareness of the market landscape, scaling opportunities and industry shifts 

  • Evaluating the work of other members of the business 

 

Still with me?  See how important these things are to a firm? It takes more than doing the work to be successful. It takes oversight, management, planning and making a path forward for everyone.  

 

Take some time to craft your own CEO job responsibilities for your firm. 

 

Create a structure to do the work of CEO in your firm. 

Now that we recognize the role of CEO and have job responsibilities written, we need to create a structure to do the work. What does this mean? Simply put, it means setting aside time to work on these tasks because they are important. We can do this by saving time on our calendar for CEO work. We can take our business on vacation like I mentioned in Episode 142.  

 

Some other ways we can do this work is to create processes or to delegate some of the information gathering. We can identify groups or small task forces within our companies to make suggestions. We don’t have to do everything alone, but we need to be able to guide the work.  

 

What makes this the most successful is to understand the importance of the work, have a plan for the work, and then to calendar the work. What I hear most often from successful business owners looking to scale is that they know they need business development time, but they don’t know what to do when they schedule the time, so they find themselves falling back on doing the technician activities of the firm. By writing out the responsibilities of the CEO you are actually creating a list of things to do.  

 

Every successful business I have worked with had a successful CEOI that created a structure for making decisions, planning for the future, and helping lead and guide the team members. We get to be this person in our own firm. It takes work but is so very satisfying for us and for our team and our clients at the end of the day.  

 

Just like financial success, being a leader takes tenacity. We may each approach the role of CEO a bit differently in our firm based on our strengths, desires and time. But please know this, the work of a CEO is necessary and should not be pushed aside because we don’t know what to do or how to do it. 

 

My coaching is about making you a better business owner, not a better designer or workroom specialist. I want to educate and equip you to lead your team, to have oversight of your financials, to think strategically and to own every aspect of your business. You can check out the Case Studies on my website at ScarletThreadConsulting.com under the Freebies section. In every one you can see the transformation of the business owner into fuller acceptance of the CEO role. This transition doesn’t happen by accident – and neither does your profitability.  

Key Thoughts:

  • We need to recognize that the role and the position of CEO in your company exists. Michele (4:53) 

  • You need to set aside time to consider the future, work on guiding your firm and your team and building up your leadership skill set. Most of this work starts with how you think and the mindset you have towards leadership. Michele (5:18) 

  • We want to identify the responsibilities of CEO in your firm, we may not all do it the same. Michele (6:05) 

  • It takes more than doing the work of the day to day to be successful. It takes oversight, management, planning and making a path forward for everyone. Michele (7:44) 

Contact Michele:

References and Resources:

Michele Williams
Previous

156: How to Have a Successful Brand Photo Shoot for Your Design Firm
Next

154: How to Restart Your Interior Design Firm