Thinking Like a CEO vs Thinking Like an Employee

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the eight episode of the podcast and today I want to speak about an idea that is very simple, but very important to consider.

Which is this idea that you should be spending time thinking and working like a CEO instead of just spending time thinking and working like an employee.

Now, let me just say 2 things right off the bat:

1) Both the CEO and the employee are important for the success of any business and I’ll cover that in more detail during the podcast. 

2) If you have a Head Coach or Club Manager type role, then you must absolutely, 100% spend some time in CEO mode.

But if you’re listening to this and you don’t have a Head Coach or Club Manager type role, I’d argue that learning to spend some time in CEO mode will still be useful to you even if you’re not ultimately responsible for making decisions.

And it can be useful in 2 ways, 1 - because you might hold a decision-maker position in the future, and why not starting learning the skills you’ll need now, and 2 - because even though you might not be able to make the decisions yourself right now, if you’ve got good ideas, you can most definitely influence the decision making process!

Ok, I just wanted to get those 2 things out of the way right from the start.

But let’s get back to the main theme of this episode which is this idea that we can spend time thinking and acting as an employee or we can spend time thinking and acting like a CEO.

And like I’ve already said, both are important.

But the problem is that, from my experience, we spend way too much time on employee mode, and not nearly enough time thinking and acting like a CEO.

Which is understandable in a way, since most tennis coaching businesses and clubs are small. And in a small business there are fewer people to do the jobs needed. So the jobs of the CEO usually get overlooked.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. 

Before I go into the why’s let me first define what I mean by CEO and employee thinking and how they’re different from one another.

So, the CEO is typically the highest-ranking executive in a company. They make all the major decisions for the organisation and are ultimately responsible for the results, good or bad, of the organisation. They sit at the top and set the direction for the organisation as a whole.

The employee on the other hand, is the person that makes the day-to-day work happen. They’re the ones that create the products or provide the services to the customers of the organisation and do every other necessary job to ensure that the organisation keeps running the way it's supposed to.

Employees are of course extremely important for any organisation.

In fact, an organisation could live without a CEO, at least for a while, but it wouldn’t be able to last a single day without employees.

Without the employee the business doesn’t exist.It can’t provide the services or products to customers and therefore will not generate any revenue.

So, the employee is absolutely essential for the running of our coaching businesses and clubs.

And this explains why it’s so easy for all of us to spend all our time in employee mode.

Making sure that we deliver the coaching lessons, that we resolve members’ issues, that we communicate with customers, that we create the new courses on the booking system, that we phone the plumber because a pipe burst and whatever else that needs to be tackled on any specific day.

The employee must perform all these tasks. 

And while there’s nothing wrong with that, it doesn’t tell the full story.

For any organisation to succeed in the medium to long term it also needs someone playing the CEO role, at least once in a while.

And I’ll explain this idea by answering 2 questions: 1 - why do you need to spend time on CEO mode? And the second, even more important question, how do you achieve that? What do you need to do to go into CEO mode?

So let’s tackle the first question: why is it important to spend time as the CEO.

And the answer is relatively simple.

Because the CEO is the one that is able to pull away from the business and look at it more objectively. 

The CEO is the one that will be able to stop, and think about where the business or club has come from and what decisions might need to be made in order for it to move towards its goals.

The employee thinks in hours, days and maybe, just maybe, weeks. 

The CEO thinks in months, quarters, years and maybe even decades.

Without the CEO setting the course, the employee just works for the day or the week without any true sense of direction. 

Without any clear path for the future of the business or the club.

And let me be clear here, if you run or work for a small coaching business or club then the CEO and the employee will be the same person.

Small organisations like ours don’t have the luxury of having someone working full time as a CEO. 

In fact that would be overkill and probably create more problems than it solves. 

But to never stop to think about the future, isn’t ideal either.

Ok, so that answers question number 1 which was: why it’s important that you spend some time in CEO mode.

Let’s answer the second question now, which is: how do you actually go about doing it? How do you spend time in CEO mode?

In order to do it well you need 2 things: 1 - a clear and detailed vision for the future of the business or club.

You need something for you and the rest of the organisation to aim for.

You cannot be an effective CEO, if you don’t know what you’re aiming for.

That would be like a captain of a ship setting a course without knowing the desired destination. 

It doesn’t make sense and it won’t get you very far!

And number 2 - an understanding of the important numbers of the business.

In order to play the role of CEO effectively, you need to understand the reality of the business.

Numbers are the true language of business. 

They tell you the facts about the performance of the organisation and help you see where things are working well and where things need to change and improve.

If you don’t track the numbers of the business, you will never be able to truly understand your business and where it is right now.

To pick up the analogy of the ship’s captain again, not knowing the numbers of your business or club, is the equivalent of the ship’s captain not knowing the ship’s current position.

If a captain doesn’t know the ship’s position it can’t be effective in setting a course to its destination.

In business it’s the same thing.

Without knowing the numbers you can’t effectively make decisions with any certainty that those decisions will take the organisation in the right direction.

So, make sure to sit down at least once a month and take a few hours to capture and look through all the important numbers for the business/club, and assess what’s working right and what could be improved.

Once you’ve taken that time to reflect, you can make informed decisions and create plans to execute and implement the changes you know you need to make, in order to get the business or club closer to where it needs to go.

Ok, hopefully all of that made sense!

The reality is that spending time on CEO mode is really not difficult, as long as you commit to it.

My hope is that from now on you will give yourself permission to regularly pull yourself out of the business and spend some time analysing and thinking about the big picture.

Give yourself the opportunity to find your CEO hat, and to wear it regularly as this will allow you to make the big strategic decisions, which are necessary for any organisation.

If you never do that and only focus on the day-to-day stuff, then you’ll always make decisions that only take into account the small stuff and never the bigger picture.

Spending time working and thinking as an employee is crucial for keeping the business or club going on a daily basis.

But spending time working and thinking as a CEO is crucial to provide direction to all the day-to-day work and to ensure the success of the business or club in the long run.

So you should strive to do both.

Spend all the time you need on employee mode, but make sure to carve out some time every week or every month to pull back and think about the big picture.

Finding that balance will give you the best chance for success.

Alright, I think that you probably get the idea by now!

That’s all for today’s episode. I hope it was useful to you and I’ll be back soon with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy podcast.

Until then and thanks for tuning in.