My CEO Life

I received the following question the other day

“Would you say there was one single concern that topped the list of concerns for CEO’s of large companies (e.g., Fortune 1000 size)?  In other words, while I know there are a lot of issues, and they vary depending on company, industry and location, but would you say there was one challenge that of all the CEO’s of large corporations face that is greater than any other?”

The first thing that popped into my head was all about finding and retaining great people. Then after thinking about it for a while, i still came to the same conclusion.

I dont think it matters how big or how small the business is, hiring great people and then keeping them in the business is always the greatest challenge.

Hiring is all about getting the marketing message right.  The product is the business and its culture and the best way to market the opportunity to join the business is by targeting where the employee is and then getting the offer right.  We have a person in our business who is specifically tasked with poaching staff from competitors.  We know their organisation structures, their staff and most importantly who is good and who is not.

When retaining people, we implement a balance of salary based initiatives (shares / cash etc) and other benefits.  We offer programmers a day a week to work on their projects.  We offer education and training based on the development plan put in place for an employee (by the employee) and we work hard a creating a culture that is hard to say good bye too.

The bottom line – an employee is a customer.  Most businesses dont get this simple message.

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