A few months ago, this blog took insights from Bob Dylan. This week, we’ll turn to another rock legend, Randy Newman. One of my favorite albums of all time is Newmans', Sail Away. It’s a controversial compendium that dares to tell stories from all sorts of unsavory character’s perspectives. In the second track, “Lonely at the Top”, Newman embodies a person of notoriety or fame who claims, “I’ve been around the world…Ev’rybody knows my name…You’d think I’d be happy, but I’m not.”
This type of existential crisis is disturbingly relatable.
Of course, nothing about my company, Kasvaa, is equipped to handle anything that important.
However, we do know a thing or two about CEO loneliness (in the job, that is).
According to new reporting, CEO turnover is at an all-time high. What’s driving this challenging environment? After all, with the possible exception of sales, the CEO tends to make the most money of anyone in a company.
At Kasvaa, we work with CEOs and Founders and their teams. My anecdotal observation is that CEOs often have three challenges that drive professional frustration:
They are unable to realize their entrepreneurial vision.
They have no one to complain to or vent their frustrations.
They don’t have the team to get the job done.
No one who shares their passion
The challenge of realizing their vision basically stems from the difference between entrepreneurship and W2 employment. Founders are visionaries. That’s why they started their companies and desire to lead others to solve a problem. Once they have found a product with market fit, they hire people to relentlessly attack the problem. However, entrepreneurship requires constant re-evaluation and adaptation. So the correct posture for the CEO is to constantly look out for what’s coming next.
In most cases, this is not the case with an ordinary employee. Their job is to execute against their job description. They can utilize creativity and resourcefulness but in the limited context of advancing the company and product mission. If the CEO were to bring them future challenges or new innovations, it might lead the employee to distraction or frustration. In short, for most employees, a growth plan that looks outside the context of their current work would be unwelcome.
“I can’t complain. No one will listen.”
We also see the inverse challenge for CEOs. While it’s difficult to share their dreams with their team, it’s also hard for a CEO to complain. What employee wants to hear about the boss’ “high-class” problems? Also, the employee is likely being careful not to vent to their CEO (as it would indicate dissatisfaction with the job), so the CEO venting would rarely get reciprocation in the tea-spilling.
It’s easy to see why unilateral venting of challenges would not often come from the CEO to staff.
Gossip, as a topic, is going through a bit of a reexamining. However you feel about it, it’s not something that CEOs get to do in their company very often.
“The team with the most talent usually wins.” - John Wooden
Finally, CEOs don’t have the right team. This is a particularly acute challenge in the lower mid-market companies that we work with at Kasvaa. Think of a company with $3MM in revenue. Their company payroll might generously be set at $1MM, spread over as many as a dozen people. If you include the CEO's salary at $250k, that doesn’t leave much for the rest of the team. Moreover, the types of deep experience, skill and talent that would command salaries of $200k+ would be largely impossible to saddle on a company of this size. Therefore, the CEO of this small company gets frustrated because they can’t afford to hire the people they need to grow their company.
Kasvaa solves these problems for our clients.
Yes, it’s time for some shameless self-promotion! Kasvaa solves these CEO problems in a few ways.
One, we serve as a senior-level advisor to the CEOs. Like a business coach, we are able to process with our clients and allow them a space to vent their biggest challenges. The type of brainstorming they can’t do with their teams is welcome at our executive steering committee meetings we hold with our clients. In fact, one client told me that our meetings were their favorite, because they had no other place to discuss the “big ideas” impacting their company.
Second, we help them bridge the talent gap, by bringing fractional leadership to our clients. For example, a $6MM technology services client that is utilizing Kasvaa’s team to acquire and merge with similar providers. We have a former investment banker on the team with 20+ years of experience in M&A. This type of resource would be impossible to pay for our client to hire as a full-time resource. However, the client gets access to this advisory at a fraction of the cost of an FTE. Furthermore, an investment bank would not be interested in the deals our client wants to pursue because any transaction fee would be too small. We work on retainer and don’t charge our clients extra for closing small transactions.
More than a traditional consulting firm
I sometimes joke that there are zero CEOs who wake up in the morning looking to hire a consulting company. Who wants to pay consultants? Yet, Kasvaa is coming up on our 5th year of business because we actually solve our client’s biggest problems.
Are you a CEO with a vision and lacking the full team to execute? Let’s talk. Find out more about our growth work and team augmentation here.
Best,
Stephen