“The job of a CEO or any manager is a constant battle between doing the work and communicating about the work; between being head down and popping your head up to motivate the team or inform the outside world. Yet crucial functions are beginning to move back into the remit of the CEO. Communications is one of them.” – Christina Farr, The Storyteller’s Advantage: How Powerful Narratives Make Businesses Thrive
There’s no longer a lot of debate over whether the founder/CEO should be a startup’s primary voice telling the company’s story. The more significant debate is how, not whether.
As healthtech investor and former journalist Chrissy Farr wonderfully articulates in her new book, communications is a function that’s critical for founders and CEOs who are working to build value in their startups.
She gives plenty of examples of startup CEOs who’ve personally led storytelling. And guess what? It’s a pretty successful approach, if you measure success by building awareness, establishing relationships, and ultimately boosting revenue. Examples include Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian plus some well-known digital health leaders: Kate Ryder of Maven Clinic, Glen Tullman of Livongo, and Jonathan Bush of Athenahealth, among others.
Supporting the founder/CEO
You won’t find many founders and CEOs who argue that they have no role in telling the outside world about their company, its mission, and its progress. Success in telling the story, then, depends on the degree to which the CEO is involved.
In her book, Farr argues for a hands-on role for founders and CEOs. This includes “going direct” with PR: The CEO should selectively build relationships with reporters and get in touch with them to discuss industry trends and preview coming announcements from the company. Other tasks can include publishing and commenting on social media and turning conversations with customers, partners, and employees into personal stories to share.
All this begs the question: How can the CEO, who already has a hand in sales, product development, raising capital, leading the team, recruiting executive talent, keeping the board informed, and just about everything else, take on communications and PR?
In my experience, the best and most obvious solution is to build a system to support the CEO. This responsibility falls to the head of marketing and communications (which is typically one role in early-stage startups). It includes such activities as:
- Developing narratives and messaging frameworks to avoid starting from scratch with each presentation, LinkedIn post, or media interview
- Scheduling regular meetings and interviews to learn what’s on the CEO’s mind
- Keeping close tabs on industry and media trends to see what topics are resonating, and suggesting those topics for CEO communications
- Making recommendations about where and how to show up, as well as which opportunities aren’t worth pursuing (a leader I once worked for called this “strategic deployment of the CEO”)
- Calling on team members and external resources (agencies and freelancers) to help with CEO communications
- Ghostwriting – but always with significant input and editing from the CEO
- Figuring out who else in the company should take the lead on communicating specific topics or expertise to the outside world, and equipping them to do so
There are dozens of daily tasks associated with helping the founder/CEO. It’s clearly not a great use of the CEO’s time, for example, to fill out a conference speaker proposal or an award entry, assuming that marketing and comms leaders have the information to take that on themselves.
Where founder-led can fall short
None of this is easy. If it were, every founder would be doing it, and communications people like me wouldn’t be telling them that they need to do it.
I’ve been working with CEOs of small and large companies long enough to see what’s likely to work and what seems destined to fail. I think there are five big impediments to a successful founder-led communications program that any marketing or communications leader should account for:
Limited input and time from the founder/CEO. This is almost always the top constraint. Even well-intentioned leaders who know the importance of founder-led communications can let this slip – or fail to start it in the first place – as they feel the tug of a thousand other leadership responsibilities. That’s why it’s critical to establish a support system to handle as many of the day-to-day tasks as possible while leaving room for the CEO to think, write, and engage strategically.
Scaling. The CEO is just one voice, albeit the most important one. If the company doesn’t involve other members of the leadership team, subject matter experts, and board members and advisers, there’s a strong risk of losing momentum if consistent CEO communications proves unsustainable.
The sea of sameness. Too many founders and CEOs want to play it safe with their communications, so they adopt points of view that sound like everyone else’s conventional wisdom. This is what plagues thought leadership in general.
Lack of ideas or running out of things to say. Marketing and comms leaders can overcome this by recommending topics for CEO discussion. This requires paying attention to what’s being discussed in industry circles, mining for such things as internal data and customer questions, and prompting the CEO for anecdotes and points of view.
Lapsing into selling mode. Of course, there’s a time and place for the CEO to sell. But that’s usually with prospects. Leaders who ignore talking about industry trends and jump straight to promoting their product or service tend not to be invited to speaking and media opportunities.
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