Exercise! One thing you can be sure that is missing from not only a CEO's list but a lot of entrepreneurs. A lot of people may feel that exercise only robs them of precious time but conversely as pointed out, it keeps the mind fresh and sharp thereby increasing productivity.<p>Lincoln once said something along the lines of "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe".
"Act Like an Investor. At the end of each week, ask yourself the following question: Did our actions this past week increase value? What was the ROI on your time spent this past week? If you go 2 weeks in a row or 2 weeks in a month without a positive ROI on your time spent, you’re clearly doing the wrong things."<p>I feel like this is just good advice for life in general.
A lot of the guidance I find in posts like this reminds me of the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. His analytical approach to identifying an excellent CEO is regularly confirmed by posts like this one. I highly recommend it for new CEOs and people looking to understand some of underlying nuances and necessities of running a business.
Apparently, this seem like a no-brainer pieces of advice for everyone and anyone to take, but only those who have walked in these "shoes" can really know how difficult is to keep on smiling, loving everybody, how to be optimist and enthusiastic every single moment around the clock, specially when you see that you are doing everything right, everything by the book, you are following every single one of the 13 steps (even the one with the exercises) and you still have no ROI.<p>The truth is that a start up has to find it's own way, it has to pivot, to adjust, to ask for feedback and so on, until it has gotten some things right. There is no perfect receipt to having a successful start up - you just have to find your way.
> Set the Tone. Everyone - your co-workers, your customers, your partners, your investors, the press, your Twitter and Facebook followers - takes their cues from you.<p>Great advice for any new leader.
The most important thing is missing, IMHO: Keep selling and finding the optimal customer acquisition strategy for your product/service. Without this, "pixel perfection" is a waste of time.
Great article.. One additional task for a CEO is getting out there and recruiting. A startup CEO should aim to get at least one meeting with an engineer and sell them on your product and vision. Like Mark Suster says ABR, Always be Recruiting.