Maximize YOU!– Become the CEO Today!

September 25, 2010

Want to maximize your success in whatever you are doing? Want to have the best professional career you can? You need to start by trying to figure out what “success” means today. In essence, you need a goal. Even better, you need to take responsibility to realize the goal. You need to start thinking like you are the CEO of something!

It doesn’t matter what position, role, or goals you have… You need to get into the mindset that your are the CEO of whatever it is that you are doing! If you get into this mindset, you will be successful in whatever you do, and you will get on the fast track of personal professional success!

What is it that you are the CEO of? What is your goal? Marc Pincus, CEO of Zynga, explains this concept well in his interview with the New York Times. Nance Rosen explains this further in her post, “Personal Brands: Be the CEO of Something, Anything.”

Whether you are in product management, development, marketing, sales, customer service, or any other function — and whether you are an entry level employee or a VP-level manager — you need to take ownership of your goals with the mindset of the CEO!

What is stopping you from becoming the CEO of something? Now that you understand the idea of becoming a CEO, you have a few mental traps that you are going to need to overcome. I wrote about these hurdles in my post “Step Up and Take Ownership”, and I guarantee that you are stuck or will be stuck in one of these traps and need to really be aware of which trap you are stuck in so that you can get out of it.

Here are the traps in brief:

  • You deny that you are not taking ownership (e.g, “I take responsibility”)
  • You blame someone else for your lack of responsibility (e.g., “I can’t take responsibility because my boss won’t give it to me”)
  • You justify not taking responsibility (e.g., “I am just a ” or “I don’t get paid for that”)
  • You are stuck in the feeling of shame for not stepping up (e.g., “I suck”)
  • You feel obligation for doing something (e.g., “I will do it because my boss told me to do it”)
  • You quit mentally (e.g., “this is too much for me”)

Think about it. What important issue could you have taken responsibility for recently that you didn’t? Why didn’t you take responsibility? I am sure that you will find that you got stuck in one of these traps!

You need to work yourself out of all of these traps if you are truly going to take the responsibility for being the CEO of something.

If you can work yourself out of all of these traps, then you have the right mental mindset to become the CEO of something!

What are you the CEO of?

In my next post on “Maximize YOU!”, I will talk about truly figuring out your goal…

Founder & Partner

As the founder of OpenView, Scott focuses on distinctive business models and products that uniquely address a meaningful market pain point. This includes a broad interest in application and infrastructure companies, and businesses that are addressing the next generation of technology, including SaaS, cloud computing, mobile platforms, storage, networking, IT tools, and development tools.