The brutally honest question every CEO must answer.

Every CEO must answer this one honest question before stepping into a new idea for the company. She or he just can't escape.

I believe in what Vinod Khosla said: “Brutal honestly”. These two words have kept me going in the toughest of the times, and has helped me stay grounded in the peaks of my career. As a CEO my job is to make sure everything in the company sticks together and the operation is as smooth as possible.

One of the biggest challenge a CEO faces today, is to adopt and iterate at the speed at which the industry is moving. When you are thinking about some idea, there’s someone in the garage, doing what you are thinking. Every CEO is afraid of that person in the garage who could engulf them with the idea. Thanks to technology, a computer with an Internet connection is all that one needs to get their idea out.

Every company today, wants to stay relevant. Every CEO knows the effort that it takes to stay relevant. There is no magic to hard-work here, and all these years, here’s the one question I have seen many successful CEOs answer to themselves, to stay relevant.

Why do you think you can do this better than any other person or a company?

The answer to this single question is the key to staying relevant. Everything that you ever think of, MVPs, business analysis, market size, everything, relies on this single answer.

You could be looking at an idea that you know will work and make your company a unicorn. Everything can go right in your company. But ultimately, what matters is the execution. If your answer gives you a clear picture of how you think you can execute the idea better than your competition, then that is your way to success.

If you are a startup / small business CEO, you must have realized by this time that not every idea is completely unique. Most of the ideas are just an iteration or an exact replica of another idea, with small variation in the parameters. But if you have an idea that you believe in, and if you think you can do this better than anyone else, the world is yours.

Magic word: Execution

Here’s an interesting article by Jeff Bezos about his way of looking at things and getting things done, better than you:

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