Keeping close watch on your business: how?
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At some point you are probably going to want to hire a CEO to take over running your company for you. When this happens it will relieve you of a lot of responsibility; however it does not remove all of it. You are still the owner of the company so you are going to have to make sure that you stay on top of what is happening at your company.
The most important thing that you have to do in order to keep an eye on your business after you have hired somebody else to run it is to watch the finances very closely. You have to look at things like how much money is coming in and going out and make sure that things are not changing for the worse. When a new person takes over the way that the business operates is likely going to change and you have to make sure that the company remains profitable after these changes have been made.
It is also important that you make sure that you stay on top of any major changes that are made in the way that your business is being run. Your CEO is going to make strategic decisions that he thinks are best for the company however as the owner you need to make sure that you are involved in these decisions as well. This may be actively taking part in the decision making process or by requiring that your CEO get your approval before any major changes are made. This will ensure that nothing major happens without your knowing about it.
While it is all well and good to say that you have to stay on top of your business, the question then becomes just how do you go about doing that? The best option is to make sure that there is some sort of formal review process in place. At certain times you are going to want to get reports from the CEO that explain what has been done and what he is planning to do. You are also going to want to make sure that you get the financial reports for the company at the same time.
How often you make these formal reviews of your company is going to be up to you. Most big companies do this on a quarterly basis but you can decide what works best in your case. You do have to be careful however because if you leave it too long you may not be able to reverse any important decisions that have been made that you don't agree with. On the other hand if you do it too frequently you are really going to hamper the CEO's ability to do his work. This is why it is probably best to stick the quarterly approach that big companies use.