A CEO has just three responsibilities. Three.
And they are, in this order:
1. Communicate the vision
2. Hire and lead great people
3. Don't run out of money.
The responsibilities are in that order for a very specific reason.
- How do you hire great people? You communicate the vision.
- There are effectively two ways to not run out of money: you can either sell to customers or you can raise capital, whether dilutive or non-dilutive, it doesn't really matter.
- So, how do you sell effectively? You communicate the vision.
- And how do you raise capital? You communicate the vision.
So, in reality, the number one, number two, and number three responsibilities of a CEO are communicating the vision.
When you frame communication and vision-setting for a CEO in that way, they finally understand that they are not putting nearly enough time into thinking about how to communicate that vision to all their various constituencies.
At minimum, they have customers, and they might also communicate with employees, investors, contractors, journalists and spouses. They interact with all of these different groups and generally, they just blithely go through life and spout shit off.
We all do it.
But when a founder truly understands that the first, second, and third responsibilities they have is to communicate the vision - they tend to slow down and start putting time on the calendar to focus on what they say and how they say it.
It’s not enough to think about the contents of your mission — communication is both the transmission and receipt of information.
Your executives probably need to hear a different version than your general employees, who will need a different version than your investors. For most people, meeting those constituents where they are requires forethought and planning.
It’s extremely high ROI to invest time into refining how you communicate your vision.
You have the time - you just need to prioritize it.
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