CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

TAKING STOCK

At the end of every year, I take a few minutes to refresh my Operating System for the coming year. I reflect on how the business is doing, on my goals and development plans, and on what I want to accomplish in the coming year. Although most of that work is focused on how to move the business forward, I also make sure to take stock of my own career.

CELEBRATING “YES”; ADDRESSING “NO”

Whenever I take stock of the past year, I always ask myself four questions:

• Am I having fun at work?
• Am I learning and growing as a professional?
• Is my work financially rewarding enough, either in the short term or in the long term?
• Am I having the impact I want to have on the world?

Of course, I always shoot for four “yes” responses. As long as I get at least two or three “yesses,” I feel like I'm in good shape and I know which one or two things to work on in the coming year. That's one of the main inputs I have into setting my agenda for the coming year.

Any time the answer to one of those questions is “no,” I ask “why?”

ARE YOU HAVING FUN?

Are the people around me not fun people? Then I am hiring poorly. Are they fun people who aren't having fun currently? Then either they're working too hard or they aren't seeing enough reward or recognition for their efforts they're frustrated because their efforts aren't going anywhere or they aren't well equipped to do the jobs they have to do for any number of reasons. Is everyone around me having fun, except me? Then the problem clearly rests with me.

If I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, then I either need to delegate it, learn to enjoy it or recognize that if I have to do it and I will never enjoy it. I either have to tolerate it or find another job!

ARE YOU LEARNING AND GROWING AS A PROFESSIONAL?

There are a lot of sources of learning and growth that you can and should have as a CEO. I've mentioned some of them in other parts of the book. If your business is changing at all—you're in a dynamic industry, your business is just growing or you're pivoting or changing directions, for example—then you have a tiger by the tail and are likely to get dragged into learning and growing by the natural momentum of the business. What if it's not? What if your startup is not adding people or changing product direction? What if it's going sideways? Then you need to push yourself to learn and grow on your own.

Dive into books or take a business class. Think about your business's largest problem and go meet with five other people in the world who have run across comparable problems and solved them. If nothing else, spend time writing down the problems you have and work through a root-cause analysis. Become even more of an expert in some aspect of your business. Any of these things will help you get smarter about what you're doing.

IS IT FINANCIALLY REWARDING?

You may work at a nonprofit or be highly altruistic about your work but my guess is that if you're reading this book, you care about putting your talents to work so that you can make money for yourself and your family to live nicely, both today and in the future. If you're feeling like the financial reward isn't there in your job, it can be extremely demotivating and cause you to check out.

If it's a short-term problem (e.g., your salary is too low or you missed this year's numbers and didn't get a bonus), then you can attack that directly by either looking closely at your compensation with your board's Compensation Committee and looking at external or by making sure you are realistic and fair when you structure next year's incentive compensation program. If you are concerned about long-term financial rewards, there could be a number of causes, each of which has its own solution. If it's because your business isn't building enough value fast enough, then you're faced with more existential problems of what business you're in or thorny issues about how well you're executing—and now you have your main agenda item for the upcoming year—and maybe that's around selling the company. If it's because you don't own enough equity in your company or if it's because your company's cap table has too much preferred stock sitting in front of your common stock and you're worried that you won't make much money even if your company does well, then you need to discuss that problem openly and honestly with your board or Compensation Committee, or at least with one trusted director.

Finally, if your needs have changed even though the circumstances of your business haven't, you need to think hard about whether you can change the circumstances of your business, whether it's appropriate for you to have one of the above kinds of conversations with your board or whether you should be in the job in the first place. It's one thing to be a hero in the first two years of your company and pay yourself $75,000 while you live in a studio apartment at age 25. It's another to do that when you're 35 with two kids and a mortgage.

ARE YOU MAKING AN IMPACT?

As I mentioned earlier, impact is a broad term and having impact on the world as a CEO doesn't mean that your company has to be developing a cure for a disease. Whether it's family, friends, colleagues, clients, or some slice of humanity, you should be able to have a real impact on others around you. In your role as CEO, the bare minimum impact you should have is on your colleagues. If your company is creating jobs or if you're helping create a great work environment for people, remember that those are both quite impactful on the world around you.

So if you answer “no” to this last “take stock” question, the problem could be as simple as you not thinking broadly about what impact means. If you truly feel like you and, by extension, your business, aren't having any impact on anyone—that's a sign that you might be in the wrong job!