what the heck does a CEO actually do I used to live in fear that everyone at my company would figure out I had no idea what I was doing because the truth is I didn't know what I was doing and I did know what I was doing in large part because I didn't know what the heck a CEO was supposed to be doing now fortunately I did eventually figure it out and if you don't know who I am my name is Ryan dice my partners and I manage 17 companies across our $200 million Holding Group
so we know a thing or two about managing chaos and if there's one skill that separates CEOs that scale from CEOs that fail it's their ability to know exactly what to do next even when the walls are closing in what I'm going to show you now is that step-by-step framework to do just that to identifying your company's right next thing or r&t let's dive in first let's talk about the CEO's real job I think it was Fred Wilson who said a CEO only has three jobs number one to set the vision number two to build
the team and number three to not run out of money now this is true but here's the thing you don't need to set the vision every day building a great team should eventually become the responsibility of your managers and leaders and while watching cash flow matters your CFO and sales team should really be leading the charge on that so what's the CEO's unique job what do you actually do day in and day out well I believe it's this I believe the number one job of any CEO is to identify the company's right next thing the
right next thing or r&t is the single most important thing the business needs to be doing right now moving forward but how do you find your rnt well here's the exact framework that I use every 90 days to do just that step one reflect on the past I want you to take 15 minutes to look back over the last 90 days and I want you to make two lists where you write down number one what am I proud of these wins are going to reveal what's working and where momentum is building on the second list
I want you to to write down where do I have regrets now regrets believe it or not are goldmines they show missed opportunities and areas for improvement and this matters because pride is what's going to motivate us to move forward but it's the regrets that teach us humility and they highlight the areas that need fixing it may sound crazy but your list of regrets will be far more profitable to you than a lot of the things on that pride list step two anchor the present so now I want you to shift to the present to
the now and I want you to ask yourself where do I feel confident confidence points to strengths and reliable processes points to assets that you can utilize and double down on right now but I also want you to ask yourself where do I feel a sense of lack because lack might mean a missing ingredient skill or key hire for example maybe you feel confident in your sales team but you recognize a lack of administrative support and that's causing your best sales reps to get bogged down in data entry and just CR clean up and crap
in this case you would lack sales admins now as you've no doubt guessed lacks frequently but not always in form of right next thing step three Envision the future so next I want you to look 90 days ahead and I want you to write down what excites me excitement signals opportunities that you should explore but I also want you to write down what worries me because worries reveal potential pitfalls that you might want to mitigate against now if you notice in all these areas we're always com finding what I refer to as paired opposites something
that's good with something that's bad and it's the gap between these two that we're playing with and it's what's going to allow us to brainstorm and come up with the ideas that we need to really begin to dig in and to determine what that right next thing is step four identify your right next thing all right now comes the magic once you have taken inventory of where your company is today The Good the Bad and the really really really scary I want you to review all of the lists you should have about six of them
and the question I want you to ask yourself is this what must happen in the next 90 days to increase my pride confidence and excitement while reducing regret lack and worry and when you do this a lot of thoughts are going to come to your mind I want you to brainstorm five to seven possible initiatives that when you look at these possible initiatives you're going to think yeah if we do that then I'm not going to have that regret again and if we do that then that lack is going to go away and if we
do that you know what that thing that I'm really really really worried about all of a sudden I'm going to be pretty excited about that in other words what must be true that isn't true today for you to have more Pride more confidence more excitement and a whole lot less regret a whole lot less lack and a whole lot less worry now once you come up with the five to seven initiatives I want you to prioritize them based on potential impact that top item that is your right next thing step five take action then get
out of the way now this one is the simplest but it's also probably the hardest I want you to commit to the top initiative you're right next thing and I want you to empower your team to execute on it not I want you to execute on it because the reality is once you figure out what to do next your next challenge is resisting the urge to do it all yourself and that's why your job as the CEO is to determine your company's right next thing it's not to necessarily execute on the company's right next thing
look I hope you found this helpful but at the end of the day advice without implementation is useless so here's what I want you to do next schedule a 90minut right next thing session this week with your leadership team follow the steps we just covered make the lists and you're going to walk away with Clarity focus and a concrete plan to lead your business forward even and I would say especially if chaos is currently riging if you found this helpful you're going to love a video that I did on how we create a Clarity compass
in each of our businesses to make decision-making even easier so be sure to check that one out too
