As an SMB CEO every day is a balancing act.  There are demands for your time that you can never plan for and on top of that, you are responsible for inventing your own job!  There is no manual on running a small business that says, “This is what you do on Mondays, Tuesdays etc.”.  You simply have to use your intuition, experience, and information in  front of you to try to do the best you can for your “baby”.  This month I got a whole new perspective on the balancing act when I had my first actual baby (well my wife did).   I have had a list of projects that I have not gotten to because nobody is looking over my shoulder to make sure they get done (another balancing issue for the SMB CEO) which I figured I would get done in my “downtime” while at home.  Let me tell you, its not as easy as it sounds.  With the 3am feedings it makes getting out of bed as early as normal a bit more of a challenge.  And during the day just knowing that my recovering wife is upstairs with this precious little package makes it difficult to concentrate in my downstairs office. 

So why am I telling you all of this?  Because it is one more angle to the balancing act that many will face and try to figure out how to deal with it.  What has made this a successful transition for me so far is that I have a fantastic business partner who has picked up the slack for me while I was out.  Whether it is a partner or simply some trusted staff that you would leave your “baby” with, it is important to have that support around you.  As CEO, your are expected to be the all knowing, all problem solving, proactive, forward thinking wizard that can bring the company through tough times and manage growth properly in good times.  But you can’t do it all alone.  My advice is that if you haven’t already started molding that person or those people to be your successor, you should start today.  While you might not plan to step out of your role any time soon, you never know when you’ll need that critical help and want to have the peace of mind that things are simple “taken care of” as I did this month.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 8:41 am by Michael Giuffrida and is filed under Operations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.