Disclaimer: I’ve never been a hired CEO and have only brought on one CEO, and it is still early days on this transition. In other words, I have an n=1, and the story is still being written. YMMV.

I recently spoke with Alex Bridgeman on his great podcast “Think Like an Owner”, and he asked about what the first days of a new CEO in a company should look like.

Here are my thoughts.

Let’s start with the overall objective of a new CEO coming into an organization.

A new CEO should focus on tangible, high-impact actions that drive immediate results and set the foundation, operationally, strategically and culturally, for long-term success. 

How do they do this?

There are 6 things they should focus on:

• Hypothesis validation
• Strategic & operational review
• Team assessment
• Customer engagement
• Set clear objectives & expectations
• Build a strong culture

These are not sequential but parallel steps.

I’ll break down each a bit below.

Hypothesis validation 

• This assumes the new CEO has come in with ideas based on the recruitment process
• A lot of subsequent areas of focus can be used to validate or invalidate their hypothesis

Strategic & operational review

• Evaluate key processes and systems
• Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies
• Review technology stack and infrastructure

Note: In a company of several hundred people, there may be a lot of things one could review. This is where a pareto’esque prioritization is probably useful so you’re focused on the 20% of things that drive 80% of the strategic and operational value and effort within the org.

Team assessment

• Evaluate exec team and key personnel
• Identify talent gaps & needs
• Find a plan 

Note: The framework I used to evaluate myself as CEO can also be used to evaluate teammates.

Customer engagement

• Great opportunity to engage customers – big and small
• Talk to customers directly
• Understand their needs and jobs to be done

Note: While you can get information from front-line team (AEs, CSMs, SDRs) or marketing or product, all of that information will have some filter applied to it. Dev Ittycheria, CEO of MongoDB, describes this well when he says in his role “good news travels to him fast and bad news very slowly”.

A CEO has an opportunity to get to ground truth by talking to customers directly.

Set clear objectives & expectations

• Establish specific, measurable goals for the organization
• The type of objectives and speed with which you expect them to be achieved will say a lot about you and expectations

Build a strong culture

• Companies take the culture of their leader. The nebulous corporate entity doesn’t have a culture.
• Reinforce company values and desired behaviors
• Change existing behaviors/norms as requisite to indicate how things should be done going forward