I have mentioned it before I am rookie CEO. The leadership challenges of creating, building and scaling a company are not easy things to do. There is a reason majority of the startups fail, the reasons for failure are plenty. I have learnt in the last 6 years that success or failure of a startup has got a lot to do with the Leadership and the Team. Remember things don’t give up, people give up. The biggest challenge of a Leader is to see the path when everything is not that obvious and the whole environment looks like it is going to crumble and fall. A Leaders role is to serve, show and believe in the potential of his team so they start believing it in themselves that they will ride through the challenges. A lot of these things are easier said than done, so I believe everyone should invest in themselves to learn everyday on how to be a Leader. When Jerry Colona, one of my favorite blogger, executive coach and former VC announced last year that he was planning an exclusive CEO event called Leadership Reboot, I jumped on it to apply and I got selected but due to some personal matters I could not make it. The organizing team was generous to roll over my application to this year and I got the news last night that I have been selected as one of the CEOs who will participate in the event… I could not help but scream out with excitement. It is a fantastic learning opportunity and to connect with people who are walking the same road as I have been the past 18 months.
The role of a CEO is hard, lonely and creates a lot of monsters in your head. I cannot imagine how many times that I have tried to figure this out myself. I wrote about Leadership and being a CEO, based on the blog posts by Ben Horowitz, reading about it is one thing but actually sharing, listening and understanding from your peers without the distractions of the day to day minutia is a valuable investment. I plan to blog this week about the role of CEO, I have learnt a bunch of lessons and I also found out from the organizing team of Leadership Reboot that they are planning an event in June this year in Tuscany, Italy… watch this space for more details of the event. I am really excited to get this opportunity to learn. Rest assured I will blog about the experience and share any and all learning from this experience.
I encourage any and every CEO to take time to invest in yourself, it is a valuable life lesson of Sharpening the Saw.
