5 Things I Stopped Doing As a CEO (And You Should Too)

Being a CEO of a company means lots of responsibilities.

People trust you and your decisions, they see you as their role model and all your juniors copy your abilities.

You are not just a CEO but a mentor in disguise.

You will come across many people in life who will tell you the things that you should be doing but it is hard to find people who stop you from doing the things you shouldn’t do.

Sometimes, NOT doing SOMETHING leaves more impact as opposed to doing EVERYTHING.

Here are 5 things that I stopped doing as a CEO of a digital marketing company in order to raise my personal as well as team’s productivity (these things works well for every CEO no matter which field you are associated with.)

1- Don’t Invest Money on Things, Invest on People

Everyone desires to have a good looking office with all the amenities one can desire. Employers often extend their budget on things that are not required.

When I started my entrepreneurial journey a decade back, I would never give a second thought on buying something for my office that can make it “look” great but I always hesitated to hire an employee whose expectation was higher than the planned range. Believe me, this approach was disastrous and I lost many good candidates in the initial stages of starting my company.

But, I wasn’t too late into correcting this mistake. Gradually, I realized the importance of having deserving people in my company even if they cost more because I always have the option of cutting down my costs on things that don’t matter much and investing them on people who can make a big difference.

2- Don’t Think Your Employees Know Everything. Train Them, Set Deadlines For Them and Make Them Follow Company Standards

Earlier, I used to follow the approach of:

• Hire Talented Candidates
• Assign Them Responsibilities
• Expect Results

Now, I follow the approach of:

• Hire Talented Candidates
• Make Them Aware of the Company Standards and Train Them
• Assign Them Responsibilities
• Continue Training Them and Continue Raising the Standards
• Expect Results

The 2nd approach works much better than the first one because you cannot expect results unless you build a workforce that understands the exact needs of your clients.

Remember, candidates can either be a fresher who has no industry experience or someone who has experience working in some other company that follows work standards that may or may not match the work standards of your company so in both the cases, proper training is required.

Moreover, it is crucial to set proper deadlines for every employee because if you think they will do all the work on their own you are highly mistaken.

Shed the belief that your employees know everything and they will always deliver and follow the habit of training them and setting proper deadlines for work. 

3- Don’t Make Your Employees Feel Unrecognized and Unappreciated. Appreciate Them and Earn the Respect You Deserve.

I often remained busy recognizing my own accomplishments and planning for my next step. Little did I realized that my employees deserved my attention and expected me to tell them the 2 magic words “good job”!

When employees start feeling undervalued and unappreciated, they lose their interest for work and they start disrespecting you. As a leader, you lose the game when this happens!

On the other hand, when you are appreciating employees for the smallest accomplishments they make, you are actually making them more confident. Confident employees are happier and more productive.

4- Don’t Do All The Work Yourself. Delegate Low Level Work and Invest Your Time in Bigger Stuffs.

People sitting on the highest chair often behave like perfectionist or rather they are perfectionists. They have the attitude of “Only I can do this task and no one else can”.

Moreover, perfectionists have a fear of losing clients if they don’t oversee every single task allocated to the team. I am not saying it is not good to be a perfectionist but rather it is sometimes better to trust people in your team and allow them to handle the team single handedly instead of over seeing every smallest stuff. This might sound like a big risk but leaders are born to take risks, don’t they?

I have realized the fact that allocating my time to develop and manage the senior leadership team and planning for expansion into new markets is the role that I should be into instead of doing tasks that someone else in my team can do easily. 

5- Don’t Tolerate Poor Performance and Don’t Underutilize Employees. Be Fair and Accept Ideas and Suggestions.

Being a CEO does not means you are there to tolerate the poor performance of employees. Many times I felt I must give this employee a second chance but this second chance soon became third, fourth and continued till I realized tolerating poor performance converts into a bad habit in the longer run.

Be strict and stop tolerating poor performance. People who give excuses can’t bring results for the company.

Also, see that you are not underutilizing people in your team. Sometimes people hired for a particular work are seen allocating more than 80% of their time doing completely different tasks. This ultimately results in poor performance.

Moreover, as a CEO, you must be willing to accept ideas that comes from your employees. Doing so will make them feel they are a part of a big family. This will give them confidence and they will work with greater zeal to improve the overall productivity of the organization.

I have stopped doing the above 5 things as a CEO and I would strongly recommend you not to repeat the same. Remember, a CEO is a leader who decides with speed and smartly engages the employees to get the maximum impact.