For 60 years, JPMA has admirably fulfilled its mission to represent and support the industry. As a member company CEO for 26 years, I benefited greatly from that support. And so for the past 15 years I've tried to pay that back by volunteering to write the JPMA blog and mentor member CEOs. Here's a summary of some of the major themes I've addressed. 

The Job of the CEO

Everyone who has ever been the person ultimately and solely responsible for the success of an organization knows how uniquely challenging the job is. The realization that you have no one else to blame except yourself when things go sideways can be an almost unbearable burden. And, as every CEO knows, things are going to go sideways, upside down, and even backwards at times. Your resilience and your ability to evolve will be frequently tested. However, for the right person, it's the only job you would ever want. Are you someone who wants to control your own destiny and has the self-confidence to succeed? Would you rather die falling on your own sword than someone else's? If so, this job is for you. And it's the comfort of having control as well as the potential recognition and rewards that make it all worthwhile. 

As I look back on what I've written, I can organize the guidance I've tried to deliver into what are known as the 4Ps that CEOs need to master:

• People
• Process
• Product
• Performance
  

So, hold onto your seats. Here's 15 years of "wisdom" condensed into one post. 

NOTE: For more information on any topic, clicking on the text links will take you to the relevant blog post. 

People: "Fostering mutual understanding"

In everything you do as a CEO you are dealing with people - employees, customers, suppliers, lawyers, investors, and so on. So it's unfortunate that understanding other people does not come naturally to us. We too often misinterpret or are oblivious to the needs and motivations of others and they in turn often misunderstand us! No wonder then that human behavior can be so mystifying. Your effectiveness as a CEO, to a great extent, hinges on the degree to which you learn how to understand what's going on in the minds of your stakeholders and partners and how best to communicate what's going on it yours. 

Hiring and retaining employees. You obviously want to hire the best possible employees and keep them on board. And your "mutual understanding" skills will be tested throughout the process of selecting the right ones in the first place, enabling them to be successful, and compensating them fairly. This is not unlike how an NFL football coach recruits players, prepares the team for the games, and makes sure rewards are commensurate with performance. Creating the right culture is also a powerful communication tool both for companies and sports teams since it establishes clear norms of behavior. And mutual understanding means not forgetting that your employees have lives outside the business too and may at times need accommodations to enable them to be successful on the job. 

Teamwork top to bottom and inside out. There's no substitute for the synergistic effect that teamwork can provide at every level of a company. Teams in which there is a mutual understanding and respect can balance the optimistic and pessimistic views, provide insights from different perspectives, and blend the expertise of multiple disciplines. In addition to internal teams, we all need to team up with partners and mentors outside the company that can provide expertise we don't have, open doors for us, open our eyes, or lend a sympathetic ear. Networking capability can be a huge asset for any CEO. 

Creating and keeping customers. This is done by improving the lives of your customers in some way. Immersing yourself in their lives enables you to uncover their unsatisfied needs, create products that meet those needs, make them aware of your products, make it easy for them to buy them, provide outstanding customer service, and convert them into brand advocates. Techniques like observation of behaviors and open-ended questions in 1:1 interviews can uncover otherwise hidden life-improving product opportunities. And the best CEOs don't just delegate this immersion responsibility. They get out of the office and at least periodically meet customers face to face themselves. 

An all-purpose people relations tool. Mastering the "forgotten" but super-powerful skill of negotiation will give you the ability to handle people issues of all types. Everything starts with taking the time and effort to thoroughly understand the other person's or group's needs and by understanding your own needs as well. You then work together to fine a win-win outcome. By the way, this can also be a very useful tool in your personal life. 

Trust. If there's one common critical component for successful relationships with people it's trust. Whether it's your employees, your customers, your investors, your suppliers, anyone you need to work with, the moment you stop being open and honest, you've undermined the relationship. 

Process: "The key to performance management"

Process thinking is a skill that enables you to achieve ever-increasing quality in repeating activities with relative ease. It's the antithesis of the fire-fighting approach found in disorganized companies. As W. Edwards Deming once said, "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing."

Business model design. A business is really one big process with inputs, internal operations, and outputs. Process thinking applies process design and continuous improvement principles to the entire business holistically (business model design) and to key functions within the business such as product development, marketing and sales, order fulfillment, and billing. A well-designed business model or process can optimize efficiency, minimize potential problems, and easily evolve as the environment changes. 

Enabling delegation. Designing and documenting operating processes enables you to get outstanding consistent performance from employees without standing over their shoulders. It gives you a way to transfer the company's best expertise and experience to even the newest employees. There is a caveat however. A poorly-designed process that's too rigid or too complex can backfire. 

Continuous improvement. Having a documented process design not only enables you to create a consistent quality output, it provides a way to make the process measurably better and better over time including improvements that can come from technological advances like AI. Yes, there are processes for process improvement!

Product: "Creating superior value"

The product is what will attract customers and generate revenue. But to be successful, it not only has to improve lives in some way but it must have clearly superior value versus competition for an adequate size target market. 

Competitive advantage. As obvious as what I just said sounds, it's often forgotten. CEOs can fall in love with their products and lose their objectivity. They may not make sure that assumptions about customer needs and product appeal are validated before going into production. To go back to "Process", this is a mistake that can be prevented by developing a robust new product development process. And if you're really good and/or lucky, you'll be able to develop at least some "wow" products that have so strong a competitive advantage that they sell themselves. 

Product-brand identity. Your product development can benefit from having a unique product-brand identity that is consistently reflected in all your product designs. What I'm referring to is a set of feature or benefit "must-haves" that are universally implemented across the product line. It might be one or more things like a contemporary design scheme, or unusually high safety standards, or provably superior in-use performance. Having this in place makes it much easier to consistently introduce new products with competitive advantages while also creating a distinctive company identity that builds trust in the minds of customers. 

Performance: "The bottom line"

Everything else is meaningless if your business doesn't generate relatively consistent profit over an extended period of time. This is the true test of a business model. Yes, a new business or new product may take some time to become profitable. But you can't afford to be too patient.

Culture and planning. The "your plan versus reality" diagram at the beginning of this post underscores the fact that consistent profitability is not going to be easy. Accept the fact that the world around you is going to change continuously and rapidly. You can be sure there will always be serious totally unexpected obstacles that come along but also incredible new potential opportunities. So what's needed is an innovation-supporting quick response culture supported by a long-term oriented planning and implementation process that keeps an ear to the ground and evolves as situations change and opportunities arise. 

Staying in touch. Particularly as a company grows, there's a real risk of the CEO becoming out of touch with what's going on inside the company and in the marketplace. This has been the downfall of many companies. It helps to think of yourself as the Chief Reality Officer. You'll need a well-designed ongoing information and feedback system that gives you visibility to not just key performance indicators but also the critical intangibles that don't show up in the numbers and could be precursors to problems down the road. And you'll need to get out of your office to do it. 

Financial management. Entrepreneurs and CEOs are sometimes strong on vision and creativity but weak on financial acumen. It's important to have at least a basic understanding of financial management and forecasting. You can't just leave the numbers totally to the accountants. Only you as the CEO have a broad enough and deep enough understanding of the company to judge the validity and flexibility of the various revenue and expense components as well as practical pricing options. 

Resource Management. One of the toughest pitfalls for CEOs to avoid is trying to do too much. The pressure to produce results often causes CEOs to go off in multiple directions at once hoping something will work. They may try to expand internationally when they only have scratched the surface in the US market or plunge into a new product category before reaching full potential with existing categories. All this likely does is reduce the change of success by diluting resources including the scarcest and most precious of all - time.

Holistic life view. 

Finally, it's crucial to recognize that your performance as a CEO and by connection your company's performance depend on more than your leadership and managerial skills. Your career is only one component of your life. True life happiness can only come by achieving not just business goals but by succeeding in all components of your life like maintaining your health and important family relationships. Just like the components of your business model, all your life components are inter-dependent. 

Next Steps

As always, if you’d like more information or assistance regarding achieving your business and life goals or you just want someone to brainstorm, vent, or commiserate with, consider taking advantage of JPMA’s Executive Mentor Program by scheduling a free videoconference session with me. I’d enjoy meeting you and helping you any way I can. Check the JPMA web site for more information or contact Reta Adler at radler@jpma.org.

Ron Sidman was the founder and CEO of The First Years, Inc. and former Vice Chairman of the JPMA Board of Directors. He is currently a business consulting resource for JPMA members and serves on the Advisory Board of the School of Entrepreneurship at Florida Gulf Coast University where he also mentors students. Ron is also the founder and CEO of Evolutionary Success, LLC, a life and business coaching company.