March 2022

The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni is a lightweight read that requires little of the reader in terms of time or effort, but will still seriously challenge most leaders to examine how they interact with their teams and lead their organizations. The lessons are simple, and yet for some will be profound, and learning them could have a major impact on how well you lead.

That being said, I finished the book with a bit of a “meh” feeling. I can’t fault anything about the book other than the fact that there’s not much to it. Some books feel like they probably were a good 20 page magazine article that was stretched to 200 pages. This one simply feels like a good 20 page magazine article (or maybe 40 pages). The two additional very brief sections added on to the fable contribute very little to the value of the book. The lessons taught are valuable, but they would probably be covered in a single chapter in most of the good business books I read.

Read my full review here.

Startup CEO by Matt Blumberg is an excellent resource for leaders of high growth startups.  I would recommend any startup/small business CEO, board member, or anyone aspiring to start or run their own company to take the time to read the book through once. There may be chapters you choose to skip because they aren’t relevant to you at this time, but most of the content will be helpful at any stage in your business. The author admittedly writes based on his own experience and so you may not always agree with him, but it’s often helpful to hear other perspectives.

After reading it, keep Startup CEO handy. You likely will find yourself referencing it often as you face different situations in your business.

Read my full review here.

By nature, startups are agile and opportunistic. Mature companies often plan years in advance, guided by long term strategies. When and how should the founder of a startup change their approach to strategy as they begin to scale and establish their growing business?

As in previous articles in this series, I think the clearest way to describe this transition is to consider what “strategy” looks like for the company in three different phases: a) while the business is still a startup searching for a profitable, scalable business model, b) when the business finds that business model and begins to scale, and c) beyond that transition as the business grows and matures.

During the startup phase, most founders don’t think of themselves as being strategists. Although their vision may include a long term view of changing the world, their decision making is very focused on the day-to-day. In reality, at this point in a company’s life, the daily search is for Product-Market Fit: do we have an offer that solves a pressing need of a specific market? When the founder figures out the right answers to these critical questions, the business is ready to scale, market demand is poised to takeoff, creating tremendous demand, and the business has figured out the foundational elements of what can become a profitable business.

The founder must now figure out how to scale. The main decisions to be made tend to be around where and how to invest in scaling: Who do we hire? What capabilities/features do we develop next? What resources do we need (e.g. office space, production capacity)? Answering these questions can often be very hard, and making the wrong choices can be disastrous.

Once a company has clearly defined its strategy and is moving forward together, the nature of the CEO as strategist transitions again. The hardest decisions are often portfolio decisions — what products do we offer, what markets do we serve, and what businesses are we in?In this article, I explore what strategy looks like in each of these phases. I also bring in examples from a scaling startup, a mature business, and even the Bible.

Click here to read the full article.

Strategy is a concept that’s used in many different ways, and defined using different words, so can we even define what it means? Even more important than what it is, how do you develop strategy? In this article, I explore these important topics, including providing a 1000 foot level view of 20 different tools often used in strategy development.

Click here to read the full article.

Most startup founders are, at least to some degree, visionary. How does that change when the business begins to scale?

In the article linked below, I consider what it looks like to be the visionary for the company in three different phases: a) while the business is still a startup searching for a profitable, scalable business model, b) when the business finds that business model and begins to scale, and c) beyond that transition as the business grows and matures.

Click here to read the full article.