From crises to customers, strategy to culture, startup CEOs juggle priorities in a constantly changing environment.

Customers. Employees. Investors. Directors. Partners. Suppliers. Everybody wants to speak to the CEO. Everybody has a legitimate reason for wanting to speak to the CEO.

But the CEO’s day has only 24 hours. That’s why CEOs can’t honor every meeting request but have to rely on their leadership teams.

So, what does a typical CEO day look like?

From my own experience as the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I dare to say there is no typical startup CEO day. Even worse, there aren’t any typical CEO priorities. Being the CEO often is a struggle, and defining and redefining your priorities is part of that struggle.

It would be too easy to define clear activities a CEO typically does. That’s why I am trying to put CEO activities into the following four clusters. Their order does not represent their priorities — because priorities are often fluid in a CEO’s world.

Reacting to Unforeseen Events and Crises

Much of a CEO’s work should be proactive: Anticipating problems, regularly working with customers and partners, working on strategy, creating company culture, and based on all those activities making sound and timely decisions.

However, reacting well to unplanned and unforeseen events and crises is some of the most important work a CEO has to master.

“Real” crises are easy to spot: Cyber attacks, employee accidents, litigations, etc. In such a situation, the CEO rather stands for Chief Emergency Officer than Chief Executive Officer. In times of internal or external crisis, the CEO is in the spotlight, and the whole company might be judged on the behavior of the CEO.

“Soft” crises difficult to spot: Those that brew slowly, or blow up because the CEO didn’t pay attention to an apparently small problem, putting it into a wider context.

From my experience, a key element for a CEO to prevent brewing crises is being accessible to the team. If you hide behind a fully booked schedule, people will never bring up issues spontaneously. That’s why I have given up time blocking.

As an example, we had a good discussion recently about the upcoming migration of our database into a clustered database. One of the operations engineers raised a concern about the time and computing power required to reindex the clustered database. I closed the loop by asking the dev team to take up the valid points with the mentioned operations engineer well before migration starts.

Of course, intervening in apparently purely technical issues as the CEO carries the risk of overreacting, and making a problem larger than it is. But it can just as well help avoid a brewing crisis, thus helping to create the calm needed for a smooth operation of the company.

Working with Customers and Partners

Helping to close and keep major customers is an activity a CEO should never let go of. It helps you understand the needs of your customers, which might drive your growth and product strategies.

Major customers also appreciate having access to the CEO, as it is sometimes very important for them to hear company and product news directly from the very top.

At the same time, as a CEO, it is very valuable to get direct feedback from customers. Sometimes, this feedback is not pleasant, but if taken constructively it almost always helps to build a better product and to sharpen company culture. In my experience, customers reveal their true priorities and internal pressures more openly to the CEO than to the working-level team.

Besides working with customers, building new partnerships often needs CEO involvement. Establishing sales partnerships, and working with integrators and other big companies all affect the company strategy, so the CEO should be involved from the beginning.

Making Strategy

When thinking of strategy, people often think of financing, mergers, and acquisitions. Of course, those are the domain of the CEO’s work.

However, making strategy is often much more down-to-earth. A compelling strategy prevents the CEO from being drawn into too many tactical decisions.

In my experience, the CEO should be involved in the product strategy as well as in the growth strategy. They often go hand-in-hand, as growth depends on the product, and vice-versa.

Last but not least, growth and scaling are only possible when a growing team is working according to established standards and processes. Processes help avoid chaos and hectic, thereby making life easier for both employees and customers. And finally also for the CEO.

Employees and Culture

As a CEO, you can’t do anything without the help of your team. That’s why I think a CEO should be the driving force in establishing and maintaining the company culture: What values, beliefs, and norms does the company stand for? How do we handle errors and mishaps from our side? How do we behave in times of crisis? Where are we strict, and where do we turn a blind eye?

From my experience, company culture starts with recruiting and hiring. Hard skills are a necessity to get hired, but skills alone are not sufficient. An employee needs to have the right attitude to fit your company’s culture. And you will only ever discover culture fit once an employee has started working for you.

Sometimes you find out that somebody doesn’t fit your company culture, and you will have to say goodbye to that employee. That’s certainly an unpleasant task, but it is often the best thing for both the employee and the company. And more often than not, making and communicating such a decision involves the CEO.

Conclusion

Being the CEO of an organization means balancing order and chaos. As a consequence, there isn’t a typical CEO day. That makes the role very demanding but also keeps it interesting.

Enjoy the ride whilst you can, and hand it over to a successor if you stop enjoying it. There is too much at stake for an organization.