CEO Tip from Mark C. Panico
My guest blog for “CEO Hot Tips” today comes from Mark C. Panico, Executive Chairman of the Board, Lynn Electronics. I met and worked with Mark when he was at Legrand Data Communications and our company built a strategic partnership together. We worked closely with his team and I learned how he led and how his team worked with him and with partners at the senior level. Mark is an active executive and is an advisor or member of several Boards of Directors.
Here is Mark’s insightful blog post, which is entitled, The Simple Chemistry of Being a Good CEO, and provides 7 key elements for all CEOs to consider. Mark’s 7 tips are excellent tips and reminders for every CEO and team leader on how to be successful day-to-day. He brings decades of experience to share with us. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you Mark for your contribution!
7 Key Elements:
- Hire good people (and let them do their job). Presumably, you will be paying them good money to do what you hired them for. Get out of their way!
- Set a clear strategy with well-defined measurable goals and expectations. People can’t hit a target if they don’t know what it is or can’t understand it.
- Simplify communications and be transparent. People can’t help if they don’t understand the business. Tell them everything you can, even the bad news. If you don’t, they will make assumptions, and rumors will start. Those are always worse than the truth.
- Remember you are not the smartest person in the room (Listen more, talk less). Your people have diverse backgrounds and experiences and may have seen or done something you haven’t that you can benefit from.
- Always ask why, again and again. It often takes time to get to the heart of an issue and the facts don’t often come out in one neat stream. Keep digging until you hit bottom.
- Get out from behind your desk. You will be surprised at what you can learn, from your people, from your customers, from your suppliers about your own business and its reputation, and what’s happening in the market that you won’t get in staff meetings or market research reports. Don’t just focus on your peers, get out and see the people in the trenches.
- Be approachable. To your employees, to your customers. People work with and open up to leaders that they are not frightened of. They will work harder for you and they will tell you things you won’t hear in staff meetings.
Thank you for stopping by CEO Insights to visit and experience excellent CEO tips and insights to help you become the best leader you can be!
If you haven’t already, check out my book, “The Rookie CEO, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!” about 9 rookie CEOs and their journeys. For aspiring CEOs and leaders, these behind-the-scenes stories will help you gain insight into what behaviors drive excellent results and what behaviors cross the line driving poor execution and results. Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, wrote the foreword.