What is the Chief Everything Officer Syndrome?

A Thought Leader Guest Post from Philip Topham:

Are you killing your startup? The Chief Everything Officer Syndrome

Too many startup founders kill their own startup. The Chief Everything Officer Syndrome

Over the past few years, I’ve coached and engaged more than 200 startup founders. At the earliest stages, the founder is a Chief Everything Officer. They are skilled to juggle many things and move their company forward. But those very same Everything Officer skills become liabilities. I’ve seen the Chief Everything Officer fail to raise money, fail to get sales, struggle to be profitable, be replaced by the investor’s pick or even shut down.

It’s purely understandable at the beginning that startup founders need to be flexible. One day they are posting on social media; the next they are creating a pitch deck for investors, all the while talking to potential customers and checking on the progress of the product. And if they are technical founders, they might actually be coding or engineering the product. The Chief Everything Officer excels at bouncing from one task to another in an endless juggle that all early-stage companies go from idea to product-market fit to first revenues.

As they race to revenue jumping unforeseen hurdles the Chief Everything officer has speed, positivity and agility. They have endurance and fortitude. The founder is tenacious at keeping everything and everyone moving forward.

Attributes of a Chief Everything Officer

  • Vision
  • Passion
  • Positivity
  • Speed
  • Persistence
  • Agility
  • Resilience

This ability to be everywhere and execute or be involved in everything is a significant skill. It demonstrates to investors you have the scrappiness and can-do attitude to achieve lots with very few resources.

The Chief Everything Officer Syndrome

But all too often the Chief Everything Officer stays a Chief Everything Officer for way too long. When this happens, I call that the Chief Everything Officer Syndrome. The skills that worked so well at the beginning cause the company to wither.

There are two types of Chief Everything Syndrome – Do Everything versus Check Everything.

As the name implies, “Chief Do-Everything Syndrome” happens when the founder or founders “Do Everything” themselves. They solve problems by performing things themselves or allowing the team to implement them themselves. Technical founders often stay writing software for way too long and are constantly...

Read the rest of this article at philiptopham.com...

Thanks for this Guest Post and its graphics to Philip Topham.

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