Excerpted from Kurt Daradics’ (CEO, FreedomSpeaks/CitySourced) post Fight The Resistance:
“The past two months has been a blur. I wake up early, at my desk by 7am. It’s back to back meetings till really late at night.
Highlights:

We’ve closed significant [...]

Decision making skills, just like muscles, get better as you use them more often. As a manager, think about how much you’ve learned by exercising these muscles, and how you’ve been able to move the team forward [...]

I love this quote that Getz and Carney use in their book: “If you put fences around people, you get sheep,” said William L. McKnight, 3M’s chief executive, in 1924. Their premise is that If you give your workers maximum autonomy, in the right conditions and culture, they will “lead your business to higher productivity, profits and growth.”

Here: www.Twitter.com/CEOFlow

I’ve worked with, mentored and observed dozens of companies over the past couple of years. It’s not uncommon for the double whammy of clutter and pressure to make companies and people so busy that they can’t get anything done!

The brute force methods that used to work so well, such as “work harder,” “hire more,” “spend more” aren’t true strategic or competitive advantages. Anyone can work hard, hire people and raise more money.

Alexander Kjerulf is a great writer, and I recommend you check out his blog. I’ve included a sample here of his last post (“The seeeeeeriously cool way out of a downturn”) that’s very relevant to what CEOs are dealing with today.

By the way, I would never tell a CEO to do everything they can to avoid layoffs. Layoffs can hurt a culture, or it can help it – it depends on how they’re handled, and the unique situation of the company. In fact, I’m often suggesting CEOs consider layoffs before they’re ready to accept the necessity themselves, because lots of companies, especially startups, tend to overhire and have too many people anyway. Boards and CEOs like to make aggressive hiring plans based on aggressive growth…which often doesn’t come as fast as they want.

In Silicon Valley/Los Angeles it’s pretty grim here for many CEOs/owners – especially the ones of venture-funded companies. I see that the more stressed they get, the less able they are to get a clear picture of what they need to do to succeed. Whether it’s racing fast cars or going for a hike, getting some mental space, regularly, makes a big difference in your productivity (a big reason why I have CEO groups going in SF and LA – getting together with peers can also create that space).

Eric Golden (CEO of Equipois) & I (Aaron Ross bio) are organizing a formal, facilitated CEO group here on the westside that will meet monthly. The theme of CEOFlow is to explore what it takes to create predictable revenue & sustainable growth. It will consist of a fixed group of up to 12 CEOs which will meet in person and support each other in navigating through the economic turmoil, generating revenue and working with investors and customers in the new climate.