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Giuliana Corbo is the CEO of Nearsure , a one-stop reliable tech partner committed to empowering its clients' success. I was recently asked on a podcast what single piece of advice I would give my younger self, knowing what I know today. The question really made me pause and reflect on my journey as a CEO and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
If I had to give my young self any advice, it would all boil down to these three simple instructions: build the right team, focus on sustainable growth, and align your decisions with your long-term vision. This article is my honest CEO playbook on how I navigate leadership and business management. Let’s turn the pages together.
The Importance Of Building A High-Impact Team From The Start One of the most critical tasks for any CEO is putting the right team together. To grow a business rapidly, we must surround ourselves with individuals who know more than we do in their respective fields. Doing so requires hiring senior, highly skilled professionals—even if that means some will take home a bigger paycheck than you do.
This brings me to a crucial point: investment. Of course, you’ll need to invest to build top-notch, winning teams. If it helps, know that doing so is crucial for long-term growth.
The reason behind this is that these experts will cut your learning curve, avoiding costly trial-and-error attempts along the way. Hiring them means bringing someone on board who knows the recipe that has brought them successes in the past. With their expertise, a company’s growth can accelerate while steering clear of unnecessary pitfalls.
When the right team members are aligned with your company’s vision and equipped with the necessary tools and experience, they can perform far more effectively than any CEO could ever achieve on their own. In fact, according to Wilson , people who are aligned with the company vision tend to produce better results and “rewarding productive behavior leads to ..
. more productive behavior.” Because I’ve found this to be important to remember, I’ll also add that we have to keep any sort of ego out of these decisions.
Remember that the smartest move is to surround yourself and equip your teams with the most knowledgeable people in their domains. A Clear Vision Attracts Like-Minded People Speaking of choosing the right team, another key lesson I've embraced over the years is that you attract what you believe. Setting yourself up strategically from the start is crucial for leaders who want to achieve their goals.
Our mindset and daily decisions need to align with our ultimate goal and vision to manifest that reality; this same principle applies whether we’re steering a startup or managing a large organization. Because our thoughts shape our outcomes, by acting with our aspirations in mind, we naturally start to attract the people, opportunities and resources that align with our vision. This part of my personal playbook is more than just business strategy; it's the mindset driving my every decision.
A Marathon Mentality: The Need To Pace Ourselves For Sustainable Growth Running a business isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. With that in mind, we should prepare accordingly so we and our teams don’t burn ourselves out; especially not in the early stages if we’re working toward long-term success. As leaders, we need to create work environments where the constant “extra milers”—the people who always push harder than the rest—don’t run themselves into the ground.
We all must go at a sustainable pace so the entire team can make it to the collective finish line. A saying that perfectly captures the above idea goes: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
” It resonates with me powerfully because no CEO will ever succeed alone, and no company can reach its goals without a cohesive, well-paced team. Success is about longevity, not speed. It’s earned by bringing everyone along for the ride and sharing the journey.
We get there by ensuring everyone in all our teams is supported and that people in our organizations have the capacity to keep pushing in our sustained growth together. On that note, we need to have an accurate pulse on how much we can do at once. Fewer Initiatives Make A Focused Strategy When it comes down to company culture and leadership, remember that less is more.
Overloading teams with too many initiatives spreads energy thin and can quickly lead to negative effects. According to Catherine Cote at Harvard Business School Online , “the strongest strategists know that trying to spread effort and resources over too many projects can lead to burnout, confusion and unsuccessful results.” Prioritize key objectives down to a handful and select those that will make the most significant impact.
It helps to make sure those key goals are met before introducing any new ones. Since we’re running a marathon, after all, there will be plenty of opportunity down the road to embrace new efforts. The Vision, Attitude, Pace And Strategy Combination So there you have it: my essential CEO playbook in a nutshell.
It’s critical to establish a clear, long-term vision for the future of the company. With our priorities identified, we can also think about understanding the market, enhancing our teams’ capabilities as part of our investment and consistently making decisions per the needs of the business, not our ego. Once we align our corporate team efforts toward the same strategic goals, that focus and clarity alone will breed far more success than juggling countless initiatives that don’t yield results.
With the target locked in, we can grow toward our goals as a collective, leaving no one behind. Remember: To go far, we go together. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.
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