The Importance of Guarding

Over the past few months many people have complimented me on my weight loss and apparently more positive attitude. To all of those comments I have responded with the following:

“Heroin is absolutely AWESOME!!!!!”

Now I’ve never done drugs in my life but the above is just awkward enough to stop random dudes from complimenting me – you know how many women have told me I look good? None. Zip. Zero. But I digress.

Last week, after the ConnectWise Summit, I shared my little secret over a quiet conversation with Erick Simpson. The concept I would like to introduce you to is called:

Shit Guard

We were reflecting about how the other CEO in our community had mellowed out recently. The conversation went like this:

Erick: Hiring ____ has really been great for him.
Chris: Yeah, he’s really down to earth these days.
Vlad: Yep, he’s the shit guard.
(laugher ensues)

But I am here to tell you that this concept is very real.

When you’re the CEO of the company your daily life consists of interacting with two types of people: shameless weasels that blow smoke up your ass about how great you are because they want your money and disgruntled clients that want to take you down a notch for personal fulfillment.

As a CEO it’s a part of my job to deal with shit. When I walk in to work there is a line out my door and into the hallway, filled with shit. It rolls uphill. I sit in my Aeron and do my best to deflect all this shit to the people and processes that can best help and then I get on with my day. And thats from people that work FOR me. Can you imagine the river of people that *I* work for?

Everyone’s got problems. That doesn’t mean you, as the CEO, must become the corporate janitor in charge of cleaning up all of the organizations messes. So you get yourself a Shit Guard, someone who gets to deal with the clients shit day in and day out and consolidate what we really need to address as quickly as possible.

That way you can focus on creating and motivating resources to fix the problems and move the organization forward… not be stuck in the middle of river of complaints without a paddle.

So go on, get yourself a shit guard.