Advice for CEOs...

Steve Tobak has put together some unsolicited advice for CEOs.  Very good article including a few good links, and in particular I like the Yogi Berra quote: "If you don't know where you're going, you may not get there."

I would argue that positioning is part of strategic planning and not a topic of its own.  Strategic planning, or as a good friends used to say "having the end game in mind", mandates doing a number of different key things including the right positioning.  I'll leave that to another - probably long - post.

What I see missing from Steve's list, a critical one, is sales.  A good CEO must know how to sell.  Sorry guys, but if you're not good at sales chances are you'll not make a successful CEO.  I have seen it many times.  It's beyond selling products and services - it's selling the image and selling the company, which starts will making investors buy it, making your customers buy it, making your competition buy it, and finally making an acquisition happen.  Every presentation you do is "selling" - somebody should buy what you're saying.

And of course there's literally sales for revenue, which needs a CEO with sales background.  Without that the company will most likely shoot in the darks when it comes to generating revenue.  Non-sales CEO do not even know the right questions to ask and usually fail - at the strategic planning step - to build the path to revenue.   One might argue that some of Web 2.0 companies go for building a large user base and revenue is not important to them - again a separate topic of its own - but try to get VC funding based on that premise and then we can talk.

Anyhow, thanks Steve for putting together the article, and I hope this adds some value.