Navigating Startup Challenges: Practical Insights for First-Time CEOs with Davidson Oturu
In this powerful episode, Davidson Oturu shares hard-earned insights from years of working with startups and first-time CEOs. He breaks down why having a great idea is not enough to run a successful business and highlights the most common mistakes new CEOs make in execution, operations, and financial management.
David emphasizes the importance of understanding core business principles, building a leadership team with complementary skills, and defining company culture from day one. He also explores the critical relationship between CEOs and boards, the importance of aligning vision with stakeholder expectations, and why leadership must be treated as a continuous learning journey.
This episode is essential listening for founders, first-time CEOs, and startup leaders aiming to build sustainable, high-performing companies.
Key Topics Covered
#StartupAdvice #FirstTimeCEO #LeadershipDevelopment #CompanyCulture #StartupSuccess #BusinessStrategy #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #FounderLeadership
David emphasizes the importance of understanding core business principles, building a leadership team with complementary skills, and defining company culture from day one. He also explores the critical relationship between CEOs and boards, the importance of aligning vision with stakeholder expectations, and why leadership must be treated as a continuous learning journey.
This episode is essential listening for founders, first-time CEOs, and startup leaders aiming to build sustainable, high-performing companies.
Key Topics Covered
- Common mistakes made by first-time CEOs
- Why ideas alone do not build successful businesses
- Business strategy and execution fundamentals
- Team building and leadership composition
- Company culture and long-term success
- CEO and board alignment
- Leadership development in startups
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsonoturu/
#StartupAdvice #FirstTimeCEO #LeadershipDevelopment #CompanyCulture #StartupSuccess #BusinessStrategy #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #FounderLeadership
(00:00-00:26) Daria Rudnik
All right. Hi, Davidson. Thanks for joining for the interview. Do you want to share a few words about yourself, what you do, and how do you work with startups and startup CEO?
(00:27-00:57) Davidson Oturu
Yeah, thanks, Daria. Thanks for having me. So my name is Davidson. My background is in law and venture capital. So I started out with a legal practice where I headed my firm's technology, venture capital, and emerging companies side of things. I worked with businesses, CEOs, founders who were starting out their businesses and still trying to understand what they needed to do, help them out with building their companies, protecting their intellectual property, helping them through funding rounds, providing all that advice around how to build their businesses. How do you set up your board structure? How do you get your shareholders?
(01:03-01:31) Daria Rudnik
If there's a sector or business that you want to focus on, What kind of licenses would you be required to do? And then we also help them get those licenses too. So basically worked around that whole tech side of things to build companies, both young and matured companies, and then made a pivot to venture capital where we invest in tech startups in Africa, you know. So doing something similar, but now changing my hat to being an investor and just trying to help companies survive, you know, in this season. Thanks. So...
(01:32-02:00) Daria Rudnik
You work a lot with CEOs and like some of them are first-time CEOs. What do you see the most common mistake first-time CEOs make? I would say that first-time CEOs come to the conclusion that because they came up with a great or brilliant idea, that means they're in the best position to execute it. So I'll give you an example, you know, especially in the startup space where you could have a CEO that could come up with a great AI strategy
(02:01-02:27) Daria Rudnik
idea you know something that is disruptive and because he came up with that idea he comes up he concludes that he can run that business you know so he starts to employ people you know starts to get co-founders starts to raise funding from investors and some investors are so excited that oh this is such a brilliant idea but he's never run a company before so he doesn't know how to manage people he doesn't know how to manage his finances or other the finances of the business
(02:27-02:52) Daria Rudnik
He doesn't know how to basically build strategy. So you could have them do well for the first two years just based off adrenaline, you know, the excitement of starting something new. But when you get down to it, you know, when financial management issues hit, when operational issues hit, you know, you start to see that that business is probably not going to last. And so most of them go away. So
(02:53-03:11) Daria Rudnik
That is one of the things that just basically a lack of preparedness around what it takes to run a business. And I tell people, look, it doesn't matter how disruptive your technology is or how much you feel that you are an outlier or there's something exciting about what you're doing. It's still a business. And businesses are principles different.
(03:12-03:25) Daria Rudnik
that have to be adapted in order to survive. As long as you don't apply those business principles, you will fail. One of the things that I then tell them to do is, okay, what's your vision? Do you have a vision and strategy to execute?
(03:25-03:54) Daria Rudnik
Are you thinking long-term? Are you just there for the ride? You know, this is something exciting. Everybody's on this bandwagon now. We're talking about big data analytics. We're talking about this. We're talking about that. Quantum computing. And I'm a software guy. So that's not a vision for a business. So I always say, you know, first place to start, what's the business vision? What's the strategy? What's the plan?
(03:55-04:22) Daria Rudnik
to achieve that certain thing that i then say is what's your team structure like it's not enough to just get the top candidates from harvard or stanford you need to be able to get people that there is the right type of synergy that exists um you know between most of the people involved um do do they have experience in managing teams already um
(04:23-04:47) Daria Rudnik
Have they worked somewhere else before that have skills that are transferable? Now, it's not as if that's a foolproof strategy, but at least you're not just getting your best friend or somebody that you grew up with or somebody that went to college with you to form your team because that's not going to cut it at the end of the day. So the same way a business owner would not just
(04:47-05:16) Daria Rudnik
employ or engage someone off the streets or somebody that he knew years ago. He's going to go for people that would help him to build out his business properly. And I say, you need to do that as well. But yeah, those are some of the main things that you would see that CEOs fail to take into position when starting out. There's also the place of company culture as well. There's this thing that
(05:16-05:46) Daria Rudnik
some of these, I don't want to call them motivational speakers, but there's this statement that culture, it's strategy for breakfast, right? Because you can have the best strategy that's on ground, but if your company culture is not refined, you're going to struggle. Now, some people think that culture comes after you've set up the business, but if you've not defined what your culture is from the onset, along with your vision,
(05:46-06:16) Daria Rudnik
you know, and the value they are bringing to the business, then by the time the culture comes on ground, you're going to have a lot of challenges. It's important that culture is embedded, the right type of culture to strong one is embedded in the business from the onset. Thanks. You mentioned teens. From what I hear, like a lot of VCs, they say,
(06:16-06:41) Davidson Oturu
We invest in teams, like team is the most important asset of the startup. How do you know the team is the right one? How do you know when you, as an investor, when you see a CEO and a team, how do you know it's a good team? So it's not like there's a magic wand that you use, right, you know, to determine, but it's about complementary skills and flexibility.
(06:42-07:07) Daria Rudnik
being able to show the right type of diversity and experience that goes towards building your team. I'll give you an example. If you're trying to run a health tech, right, and the CEO of the health tech is a medical doctor, that's fine and makes a lot of sense because medical doctors should, you know, lead a health-related company. But then when you now see three other co-founders,
(07:07-07:32) Daria Rudnik
all medical doctors, and that's the leadership of the company, it then leaves you concerned about how they're going to build out a lot of things. So, for example, who's going to manage the finances, right? Because when we're running the business, we're talking about financial management, budgeting, cash flow management, forecasting, you know, and all of that. What experience do medical doctors have
(07:33-08:01) Daria Rudnik
around those sort of things. We've spoken about building cultures, you know. Again, and here's the thing though, because as leaders or as business owners, we have a wide set of skills, no doubt about it. But I wouldn't be expecting the CEO of the company, who is a medical doctor, to not focus on leading the company or executing his vision and then be responsible for every other thing, you know, that the complementary team would be able to do.
(08:02-08:25) Daria Rudnik
Who is handling operations? Is there a medical doctor or two that is going to be handling that kind of operations? Who is doing customer acquisition? Because a business will die if you don't have customers. So is it going to be the medical doctors that are going to sit down and brainstorm around that? Who has the experience to be able to deliver
(08:25-08:51) Daria Rudnik
on that you know who who has experience around risk management you know because that's that's something that a business should should be able to factor into its fabric from the onset you know how do you manage risks how do you identify them how how do you mitigate them you look at the product development side of things too you know most times there has to be like a chief technology officer
(08:51-09:20) Daria Rudnik
Who is handling that? Is he a medical doctor? You know, who's going to come up with the innovation, the technology? You know, will that still come from that pool of management team that is there? So when you see that sort of composition, it gets a bit worried. Same thing too with a fintech. You know, you probably see somebody who has a financial background, probably worked in the bank or probably worked in a consulting firm like your KPMG and all of that.
(09:21-09:42) Daria Rudnik
But then what is the composition of his team, like fellow bankers? And then maybe they are talking about breaking into the market in the United States. Maybe they're based in Malta or based in Germany. They want to break into the market in the U.S. And then none of them has any experience with the U.S. market at all. None of them has worked there. It's just like
(09:43-10:07) Daria Rudnik
You want to wing it, you know, into the United States. You know, so that sort of thing gives cause for concern. So the team has to show like that kind of right mix of experience, you know, technical, academic, you know, just operational. Let everything align that shows that you were very deliberate in picking out your team. That can be, yeah, sure, you could have
(10:08-10:23) Daria Rudnik
employees who have the experience around those things. So the argument may be, hey, our management team may not have the experience. The people that we're employing has the experience. But think about it, right? How would they be able to supervise those in their teams if they don't even understand how to build up what they're doing?
(10:24-10:49) Daria Rudnik
So somebody who is supposedly the CTO of the company wants to look at product, you know, the engineers, how is he going to understand what they tell him is happening with the company? So just the right composition, you know, goes a long way in saying that these guys are ready for what they want to do. Cool. If you think of someone who joins an existing company as a CEO or
(10:50-11:19) Daria Rudnik
What would you recommend their first steps should be? You mean they're engaged by the company to come on board as a CEO? Yes, not a founder comes to the company, an existing company. So the first thing that I will say they should do is to understand what the vision is, Ben, because if you don't know where the company intended to go in the first place, then
(11:19-11:49) Daria Rudnik
How do you know that where you want to take them is actually what should have been in the first place? Now, what I tell people is this vision, those things, they can expire, right? You know, so there was an agreement that I was working for where the vision and mission statement had been written like 12 years before I then asked, where is it? And they found it very difficult to find it. You know, like they said, probably somewhere in the website, but then they realized it was on the old website, which had been dismantled.
(11:50-12:19) Daria Rudnik
When we eventually found the vision and mission, they were so redundant at that time because what they were looking for before had become so obsolete. But then because that vision and mission wasn't even front and center for the opposition, it then meant that they didn't really have that as anything that mattered to the company. If every new employee that came didn't know what it was, even if people may have heard about it, it meant nothing because the business wasn't leaving it out.
(12:20-12:48) Daria Rudnik
So at least find out what the vision was or is, and then see if, number one, does it still relevant? Does it need to be transformed? Does it need to be updated, carded, and a completely new one built for modern times? And you then ask yourself, the stage that the business is at this time, has it been defective?
(12:49-13:18) Daria Rudnik
Does it need a transformational approach towards anything? You then need to find out if the company is in the space of, you know, like it would depend, okay, are they like a service company? Are they a product company? Be able to understand the kind of relationships that have existed with stakeholders within that space, the investors, the customers, you know.
(13:18-13:47) Daria Rudnik
Has there been sufficient trust, you know, even within the company itself and all of that, that touched on culture before as part of what should be taken into consideration? I would say a new CEO should also be able to take into consideration what the company culture is. Has it been sufficient enough? Has it been implemented in such a way that the business understands where it's headed?
(13:48-14:16) Daria Rudnik
I would also say the leadership of the company is necessary. So if you are the CEO, who are the other C-suite executives? Have they been maintaining ethical standards? Have they been leading with integrity after all of that? Will that leadership structure need to be revamped or changed? You would also need to be able to look at that and then map out your own strategy as to how to transform the company or make it better based on where
(14:17-14:40) Davidson Oturu
It presently is at that time. Those are some of the things that I would say are important for the first time for an incoming CEO to take into consideration when going into a business. So I hear like the vision, the culture, executive team, strategy. How should a, what about the board? How should a new CEO build relationship with the board?
(14:41-15:09) Daria Rudnik
Building a relationship with the board, I would say that you just need to be able to understand where each person is. And you can see your board as kind of like your stakeholders, right? So there has to be an alignment. If the board is thinking in a different direction and then you are thinking something else, there will always be that push and pull, right? So which takes us back to what the vision is, right? And the strategy for execution.
(15:11-15:32) Daria Rudnik
That needs to be well identified and aligned for the board to be able to understand that no matter how successful the business may have been, as the incoming CEO, the reason why you're coming on board is to take the company to the next level, right? And we tend to say what got you here will not get you there. So it depends on where you want to go.
(15:32-16:02) Daria Rudnik
I think there has to be that alignment with the board. Everybody needs to be on kind of like the same page. Are you always going to have everybody thinking the same way? Definitely not. As much as possible, the majority of the board being in alignment with where you want to go, I would say is very crucial. So I think there needs to be that consistent feedback, a strategy or an approach regarding where you want to go.
(16:02-16:28) Daria Rudnik
Are you consistently keeping your board on track with where you are? I provided them with the right type of updates. And I would say that's where something like effective communication comes in. There have to be that transparency, you know, consistent communication with the board so that they understand where you want to go, you know, and if you're achieving your desired purpose. Mm-hmm.
(16:29-16:54) Daria Rudnik
You mentioned vision several times. Who do you think is responsible for vision, for organization with the company vision? The CEO, founder, board, executive team? Yeah. So which takes me to, you know, what I had said initially about how some of these roles change and how even refining the vision comes into play. So most times when the company is starting now, the CEO is
(16:54-17:19) Daria Rudnik
The reason why the company started out, right? Well, let me say the founder is the reason why the company started out because he was the one who came up with the idea and he said this is what he wants to do. But as the company grows to a point, you could have the founder as the CEO, but just like you rightly said, you could then want to switch off the CEO. And again, the fact that he was the founder doesn't mean he's the best CEO for the job.
(17:20-17:44) Daria Rudnik
And so depending on how well built out the company is, you can see that responsibility for building out the vision shift from person. From the beginning, the founder is responsible for the vision. But then subsequently, you could also see a CEO who may not be the founder saying, here's where we should go with the vision because whether it
(17:44-18:07) Daria Rudnik
founder started it out with could only take us to this side. And again, to reiterate that sometimes the founder at the beginning has no experience around running the business. He's just a great guy who has a lovely idea. Does it mean he may not be able to come up with the greatest vision ever known to man? No, he may actually be able to do that. But in most instances,
(18:07-18:29) Daria Rudnik
He may not. So the CEO who you will be employing to come on board, you're bringing him on because he has experience. And with that experience would come knowledge around how to not only refine a vision most times, but also how to execute. But then subsequently, you could then have the board because if the board is now at a point of maturity where they're able to question, okay,
(18:29-18:45) Daria Rudnik
This vision that we had, was it like a short-term vision, you know, or was it like a long-term one? Because visioning, again, can have that variation to it. You can have a short-term vision, right? Or the vision that for where the company wants to go,
(18:45-19:12) Daria Rudnik
It's kind of short-term, you know, but then you couldn't have like a long-term vision, which can come into like five years down the line, you know, where you look at operational needs, strategic planning, you know, and then you're able to have a long-term vision throughout the company. So you could definitely see the responsibility for crafting the vision move across, you know, different persons within the vision based on the life cycle of the company. Well, thanks, Davidson. I've asked all my questions.
(19:12-19:38) Daria Rudnik
Is there anything I haven't asked you and you want to share it with the newly first-time CEO? What I will say that I've seen is, and I think, again, it comes down to that place of not having sufficient experience around running a business. I'm sorry that I have to keep going back to that, but I've seen CEOs who have been running a business for like 10 years, right?
(19:38-20:02) Daria Rudnik
The number of years you've been running the business does not mean you have acquired the skill sets to run the business. So, you know, I would say that experience is the best teacher, right? But the question is, what kind of experience that you acquired? If I start out on my own and I'm just running my business, you know, for 20 years plus, I'm still the first time CEO, you know, like, and so whatever...
(20:03-20:24) Daria Rudnik
If I have not exposed myself to tools and skills that would upgrade my leadership, it doesn't matter how long that we're doing it. Somebody may have become a first-time CEO two years ago, and the level of experience and knowledge and skills he has acquired within that period of time will change.
(20:25-20:48) Daria Rudnik
I would shine and I would leave that 20-year-old CEO who's been doing it for so long. So I think there has to be that understanding of what growth means for a CEO, right? And the fact that it's always a learning process. You never get to the point where you are perfect in your leadership journey.
(20:48-21:16) Daria Rudnik
So one of the books that I really like so much is by John Maxwell, The Five Levels of Leadership, where he breaks down how the leadership journey keeps growing. And then the fact that you were an excellent CEO in a different position doesn't mean that when you move to a new one, that's saying, sure, you may still be excellent in what you do, but you see, you're not dealing with different people, different experiences that they have, different structures. It might be in the same sector.
(21:16-21:43) Daria Rudnik
So it may be a fintech company from one fintech to the other. It doesn't mean that the same way that people reacted to your skills and your sarcasm or your humor, you know, it's the same way that people would manage it. So you always need to be in that learning place where each stage you move, you know, you're trying to just gain more experience, you know, expand your, you know, repertoire. And then just keep building along the way.
(21:43-21:50) Davidson Oturu
So you're muted. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much, Davidson. It was very insightful and very helpful for new CEOs.
All right. Hi, Davidson. Thanks for joining for the interview. Do you want to share a few words about yourself, what you do, and how do you work with startups and startup CEO?
(00:27-00:57) Davidson Oturu
Yeah, thanks, Daria. Thanks for having me. So my name is Davidson. My background is in law and venture capital. So I started out with a legal practice where I headed my firm's technology, venture capital, and emerging companies side of things. I worked with businesses, CEOs, founders who were starting out their businesses and still trying to understand what they needed to do, help them out with building their companies, protecting their intellectual property, helping them through funding rounds, providing all that advice around how to build their businesses. How do you set up your board structure? How do you get your shareholders?
(01:03-01:31) Daria Rudnik
If there's a sector or business that you want to focus on, What kind of licenses would you be required to do? And then we also help them get those licenses too. So basically worked around that whole tech side of things to build companies, both young and matured companies, and then made a pivot to venture capital where we invest in tech startups in Africa, you know. So doing something similar, but now changing my hat to being an investor and just trying to help companies survive, you know, in this season. Thanks. So...
(01:32-02:00) Daria Rudnik
You work a lot with CEOs and like some of them are first-time CEOs. What do you see the most common mistake first-time CEOs make? I would say that first-time CEOs come to the conclusion that because they came up with a great or brilliant idea, that means they're in the best position to execute it. So I'll give you an example, you know, especially in the startup space where you could have a CEO that could come up with a great AI strategy
(02:01-02:27) Daria Rudnik
idea you know something that is disruptive and because he came up with that idea he comes up he concludes that he can run that business you know so he starts to employ people you know starts to get co-founders starts to raise funding from investors and some investors are so excited that oh this is such a brilliant idea but he's never run a company before so he doesn't know how to manage people he doesn't know how to manage his finances or other the finances of the business
(02:27-02:52) Daria Rudnik
He doesn't know how to basically build strategy. So you could have them do well for the first two years just based off adrenaline, you know, the excitement of starting something new. But when you get down to it, you know, when financial management issues hit, when operational issues hit, you know, you start to see that that business is probably not going to last. And so most of them go away. So
(02:53-03:11) Daria Rudnik
That is one of the things that just basically a lack of preparedness around what it takes to run a business. And I tell people, look, it doesn't matter how disruptive your technology is or how much you feel that you are an outlier or there's something exciting about what you're doing. It's still a business. And businesses are principles different.
(03:12-03:25) Daria Rudnik
that have to be adapted in order to survive. As long as you don't apply those business principles, you will fail. One of the things that I then tell them to do is, okay, what's your vision? Do you have a vision and strategy to execute?
(03:25-03:54) Daria Rudnik
Are you thinking long-term? Are you just there for the ride? You know, this is something exciting. Everybody's on this bandwagon now. We're talking about big data analytics. We're talking about this. We're talking about that. Quantum computing. And I'm a software guy. So that's not a vision for a business. So I always say, you know, first place to start, what's the business vision? What's the strategy? What's the plan?
(03:55-04:22) Daria Rudnik
to achieve that certain thing that i then say is what's your team structure like it's not enough to just get the top candidates from harvard or stanford you need to be able to get people that there is the right type of synergy that exists um you know between most of the people involved um do do they have experience in managing teams already um
(04:23-04:47) Daria Rudnik
Have they worked somewhere else before that have skills that are transferable? Now, it's not as if that's a foolproof strategy, but at least you're not just getting your best friend or somebody that you grew up with or somebody that went to college with you to form your team because that's not going to cut it at the end of the day. So the same way a business owner would not just
(04:47-05:16) Daria Rudnik
employ or engage someone off the streets or somebody that he knew years ago. He's going to go for people that would help him to build out his business properly. And I say, you need to do that as well. But yeah, those are some of the main things that you would see that CEOs fail to take into position when starting out. There's also the place of company culture as well. There's this thing that
(05:16-05:46) Daria Rudnik
some of these, I don't want to call them motivational speakers, but there's this statement that culture, it's strategy for breakfast, right? Because you can have the best strategy that's on ground, but if your company culture is not refined, you're going to struggle. Now, some people think that culture comes after you've set up the business, but if you've not defined what your culture is from the onset, along with your vision,
(05:46-06:16) Daria Rudnik
you know, and the value they are bringing to the business, then by the time the culture comes on ground, you're going to have a lot of challenges. It's important that culture is embedded, the right type of culture to strong one is embedded in the business from the onset. Thanks. You mentioned teens. From what I hear, like a lot of VCs, they say,
(06:16-06:41) Davidson Oturu
We invest in teams, like team is the most important asset of the startup. How do you know the team is the right one? How do you know when you, as an investor, when you see a CEO and a team, how do you know it's a good team? So it's not like there's a magic wand that you use, right, you know, to determine, but it's about complementary skills and flexibility.
(06:42-07:07) Daria Rudnik
being able to show the right type of diversity and experience that goes towards building your team. I'll give you an example. If you're trying to run a health tech, right, and the CEO of the health tech is a medical doctor, that's fine and makes a lot of sense because medical doctors should, you know, lead a health-related company. But then when you now see three other co-founders,
(07:07-07:32) Daria Rudnik
all medical doctors, and that's the leadership of the company, it then leaves you concerned about how they're going to build out a lot of things. So, for example, who's going to manage the finances, right? Because when we're running the business, we're talking about financial management, budgeting, cash flow management, forecasting, you know, and all of that. What experience do medical doctors have
(07:33-08:01) Daria Rudnik
around those sort of things. We've spoken about building cultures, you know. Again, and here's the thing though, because as leaders or as business owners, we have a wide set of skills, no doubt about it. But I wouldn't be expecting the CEO of the company, who is a medical doctor, to not focus on leading the company or executing his vision and then be responsible for every other thing, you know, that the complementary team would be able to do.
(08:02-08:25) Daria Rudnik
Who is handling operations? Is there a medical doctor or two that is going to be handling that kind of operations? Who is doing customer acquisition? Because a business will die if you don't have customers. So is it going to be the medical doctors that are going to sit down and brainstorm around that? Who has the experience to be able to deliver
(08:25-08:51) Daria Rudnik
on that you know who who has experience around risk management you know because that's that's something that a business should should be able to factor into its fabric from the onset you know how do you manage risks how do you identify them how how do you mitigate them you look at the product development side of things too you know most times there has to be like a chief technology officer
(08:51-09:20) Daria Rudnik
Who is handling that? Is he a medical doctor? You know, who's going to come up with the innovation, the technology? You know, will that still come from that pool of management team that is there? So when you see that sort of composition, it gets a bit worried. Same thing too with a fintech. You know, you probably see somebody who has a financial background, probably worked in the bank or probably worked in a consulting firm like your KPMG and all of that.
(09:21-09:42) Daria Rudnik
But then what is the composition of his team, like fellow bankers? And then maybe they are talking about breaking into the market in the United States. Maybe they're based in Malta or based in Germany. They want to break into the market in the U.S. And then none of them has any experience with the U.S. market at all. None of them has worked there. It's just like
(09:43-10:07) Daria Rudnik
You want to wing it, you know, into the United States. You know, so that sort of thing gives cause for concern. So the team has to show like that kind of right mix of experience, you know, technical, academic, you know, just operational. Let everything align that shows that you were very deliberate in picking out your team. That can be, yeah, sure, you could have
(10:08-10:23) Daria Rudnik
employees who have the experience around those things. So the argument may be, hey, our management team may not have the experience. The people that we're employing has the experience. But think about it, right? How would they be able to supervise those in their teams if they don't even understand how to build up what they're doing?
(10:24-10:49) Daria Rudnik
So somebody who is supposedly the CTO of the company wants to look at product, you know, the engineers, how is he going to understand what they tell him is happening with the company? So just the right composition, you know, goes a long way in saying that these guys are ready for what they want to do. Cool. If you think of someone who joins an existing company as a CEO or
(10:50-11:19) Daria Rudnik
What would you recommend their first steps should be? You mean they're engaged by the company to come on board as a CEO? Yes, not a founder comes to the company, an existing company. So the first thing that I will say they should do is to understand what the vision is, Ben, because if you don't know where the company intended to go in the first place, then
(11:19-11:49) Daria Rudnik
How do you know that where you want to take them is actually what should have been in the first place? Now, what I tell people is this vision, those things, they can expire, right? You know, so there was an agreement that I was working for where the vision and mission statement had been written like 12 years before I then asked, where is it? And they found it very difficult to find it. You know, like they said, probably somewhere in the website, but then they realized it was on the old website, which had been dismantled.
(11:50-12:19) Daria Rudnik
When we eventually found the vision and mission, they were so redundant at that time because what they were looking for before had become so obsolete. But then because that vision and mission wasn't even front and center for the opposition, it then meant that they didn't really have that as anything that mattered to the company. If every new employee that came didn't know what it was, even if people may have heard about it, it meant nothing because the business wasn't leaving it out.
(12:20-12:48) Daria Rudnik
So at least find out what the vision was or is, and then see if, number one, does it still relevant? Does it need to be transformed? Does it need to be updated, carded, and a completely new one built for modern times? And you then ask yourself, the stage that the business is at this time, has it been defective?
(12:49-13:18) Daria Rudnik
Does it need a transformational approach towards anything? You then need to find out if the company is in the space of, you know, like it would depend, okay, are they like a service company? Are they a product company? Be able to understand the kind of relationships that have existed with stakeholders within that space, the investors, the customers, you know.
(13:18-13:47) Daria Rudnik
Has there been sufficient trust, you know, even within the company itself and all of that, that touched on culture before as part of what should be taken into consideration? I would say a new CEO should also be able to take into consideration what the company culture is. Has it been sufficient enough? Has it been implemented in such a way that the business understands where it's headed?
(13:48-14:16) Daria Rudnik
I would also say the leadership of the company is necessary. So if you are the CEO, who are the other C-suite executives? Have they been maintaining ethical standards? Have they been leading with integrity after all of that? Will that leadership structure need to be revamped or changed? You would also need to be able to look at that and then map out your own strategy as to how to transform the company or make it better based on where
(14:17-14:40) Davidson Oturu
It presently is at that time. Those are some of the things that I would say are important for the first time for an incoming CEO to take into consideration when going into a business. So I hear like the vision, the culture, executive team, strategy. How should a, what about the board? How should a new CEO build relationship with the board?
(14:41-15:09) Daria Rudnik
Building a relationship with the board, I would say that you just need to be able to understand where each person is. And you can see your board as kind of like your stakeholders, right? So there has to be an alignment. If the board is thinking in a different direction and then you are thinking something else, there will always be that push and pull, right? So which takes us back to what the vision is, right? And the strategy for execution.
(15:11-15:32) Daria Rudnik
That needs to be well identified and aligned for the board to be able to understand that no matter how successful the business may have been, as the incoming CEO, the reason why you're coming on board is to take the company to the next level, right? And we tend to say what got you here will not get you there. So it depends on where you want to go.
(15:32-16:02) Daria Rudnik
I think there has to be that alignment with the board. Everybody needs to be on kind of like the same page. Are you always going to have everybody thinking the same way? Definitely not. As much as possible, the majority of the board being in alignment with where you want to go, I would say is very crucial. So I think there needs to be that consistent feedback, a strategy or an approach regarding where you want to go.
(16:02-16:28) Daria Rudnik
Are you consistently keeping your board on track with where you are? I provided them with the right type of updates. And I would say that's where something like effective communication comes in. There have to be that transparency, you know, consistent communication with the board so that they understand where you want to go, you know, and if you're achieving your desired purpose. Mm-hmm.
(16:29-16:54) Daria Rudnik
You mentioned vision several times. Who do you think is responsible for vision, for organization with the company vision? The CEO, founder, board, executive team? Yeah. So which takes me to, you know, what I had said initially about how some of these roles change and how even refining the vision comes into play. So most times when the company is starting now, the CEO is
(16:54-17:19) Daria Rudnik
The reason why the company started out, right? Well, let me say the founder is the reason why the company started out because he was the one who came up with the idea and he said this is what he wants to do. But as the company grows to a point, you could have the founder as the CEO, but just like you rightly said, you could then want to switch off the CEO. And again, the fact that he was the founder doesn't mean he's the best CEO for the job.
(17:20-17:44) Daria Rudnik
And so depending on how well built out the company is, you can see that responsibility for building out the vision shift from person. From the beginning, the founder is responsible for the vision. But then subsequently, you could also see a CEO who may not be the founder saying, here's where we should go with the vision because whether it
(17:44-18:07) Daria Rudnik
founder started it out with could only take us to this side. And again, to reiterate that sometimes the founder at the beginning has no experience around running the business. He's just a great guy who has a lovely idea. Does it mean he may not be able to come up with the greatest vision ever known to man? No, he may actually be able to do that. But in most instances,
(18:07-18:29) Daria Rudnik
He may not. So the CEO who you will be employing to come on board, you're bringing him on because he has experience. And with that experience would come knowledge around how to not only refine a vision most times, but also how to execute. But then subsequently, you could then have the board because if the board is now at a point of maturity where they're able to question, okay,
(18:29-18:45) Daria Rudnik
This vision that we had, was it like a short-term vision, you know, or was it like a long-term one? Because visioning, again, can have that variation to it. You can have a short-term vision, right? Or the vision that for where the company wants to go,
(18:45-19:12) Daria Rudnik
It's kind of short-term, you know, but then you couldn't have like a long-term vision, which can come into like five years down the line, you know, where you look at operational needs, strategic planning, you know, and then you're able to have a long-term vision throughout the company. So you could definitely see the responsibility for crafting the vision move across, you know, different persons within the vision based on the life cycle of the company. Well, thanks, Davidson. I've asked all my questions.
(19:12-19:38) Daria Rudnik
Is there anything I haven't asked you and you want to share it with the newly first-time CEO? What I will say that I've seen is, and I think, again, it comes down to that place of not having sufficient experience around running a business. I'm sorry that I have to keep going back to that, but I've seen CEOs who have been running a business for like 10 years, right?
(19:38-20:02) Daria Rudnik
The number of years you've been running the business does not mean you have acquired the skill sets to run the business. So, you know, I would say that experience is the best teacher, right? But the question is, what kind of experience that you acquired? If I start out on my own and I'm just running my business, you know, for 20 years plus, I'm still the first time CEO, you know, like, and so whatever...
(20:03-20:24) Daria Rudnik
If I have not exposed myself to tools and skills that would upgrade my leadership, it doesn't matter how long that we're doing it. Somebody may have become a first-time CEO two years ago, and the level of experience and knowledge and skills he has acquired within that period of time will change.
(20:25-20:48) Daria Rudnik
I would shine and I would leave that 20-year-old CEO who's been doing it for so long. So I think there has to be that understanding of what growth means for a CEO, right? And the fact that it's always a learning process. You never get to the point where you are perfect in your leadership journey.
(20:48-21:16) Daria Rudnik
So one of the books that I really like so much is by John Maxwell, The Five Levels of Leadership, where he breaks down how the leadership journey keeps growing. And then the fact that you were an excellent CEO in a different position doesn't mean that when you move to a new one, that's saying, sure, you may still be excellent in what you do, but you see, you're not dealing with different people, different experiences that they have, different structures. It might be in the same sector.
(21:16-21:43) Daria Rudnik
So it may be a fintech company from one fintech to the other. It doesn't mean that the same way that people reacted to your skills and your sarcasm or your humor, you know, it's the same way that people would manage it. So you always need to be in that learning place where each stage you move, you know, you're trying to just gain more experience, you know, expand your, you know, repertoire. And then just keep building along the way.
(21:43-21:50) Davidson Oturu
So you're muted. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much, Davidson. It was very insightful and very helpful for new CEOs.