Top CEO Challenges 2021

1. Top CEO Challenges JellyFish.tech

2. Table of Contests Who am I and why I've started the research What I've discovered Challenge #1: Launching a new product or service Challenge #2: Turning to the data-centric decision making Challenge #3: Digital Marketing ROI Challenge #4: Talent Acquisition Challenge #5: Cybersecurity Challenge #6: Building trust with potential clients without the possibility to meet Challenge #7: Making yourself replaceable by building a management team Conclusions About Jellyfish.tech JellyFish.tech

3. About Kseniia My name is Kseniia Goldovska. I'm CEO and Co-Founder of Jellyfish.tech, Ukraine-based web and mobile development agency. 2020 was definitely a hard year for both individuals and businesses. Upheavals we're facing are discouraging. What we should do right now is to stick together and motivate each other to keep going no matter what. This is the main reason I've started this research. To know your pain, to let you know mine, and to try solving the problems together. JellyFish.tech

4. Results Table I've analyzed the top challenges I faced in 2020, and make my own list to be estimated by the other survey participants. Here's what we have: Each challenge was given from 1 to 10 points, from more important for CEOs (1) to less (10): Challenge Average score Place Fear to launch a new product or service 4.1 1 Turning to data-centric decision making 4.8 2 Digital Marketing ROI 5.2 3 Talent Acquisition 5.6 4 Cybersecurity 5.6 5 Moreover, I encouraged the participants to speak about their own "top" problems they deal with being CEOs. So I can't help including their good points on the list: Building trust with potential clients without the possibility to meet; Making yourself replaceable by building a management team. JellyFish.tech

5. #1 Challenge Launching a new product or service The fear to launch a new product or service to a market is perfectly normal, especially at times of uncertainty. Failing to fulfill customer needs will cost a considerable amount of money, time, & resources to a company. Possible solutions: Do a thorough discovery stage to make sure you've found a product-market fit. Simplify as much as you can leaving only the core features. Don't struggle to make a product perfect, launch an MVP first, then see how it goes.

6. #2 Challenge Turning to the data-centric decision making Data-driven decision making (DDDM) is a strategy of basing every single decision on data. This approach reduces the impact of a wrong decision on your business. Although DDDM is on hype, implementation of this strategy on a regular basis is still one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs. Possible solutions: Define clearly your objectives and the data sources you can use to reach them. Present & analyze the data, draw conclusions. Build the workflow around the data, train the employees. Visualize data in a clear and concise way. Make a habit of brainstorming with your team to capture as many opinions as you can. Continue gathering and re-evaluating the data to improve the accuracy of your decisions. Do it on a daily basis!

7. #3 Challenge Digital Marketing ROI Partly responsible for managing the marketing campaigns, CEOs one of the biggest concerns is the efficiency of those. First, it's hard to find a good marketing specialist (hello, talent acquisition, challenge #4). Second, you actually can't know what technique or action or step will work for your company. So there's always a risk of squandering too much of a marketing budget. Possible solutions: Realize that more money doesn't mean better marketing. Always stay in search of new (not obligatory costly) ways to promote your service/product. Know your target audience and competitive advantage of your product/ service really well to discover new marketing channels based on this information. Become the part of a community to communicate with your customers directly and provide a better product/ service.

8. #4 Challenge Talent Acquisition The problem of talent shortage and sky high price of the hiring process is one of the global problems: according to the Europe and North America needed 16 to 18 million more educated employees that are going to be available. And the pandemic did aggravate the problem. McKinsey Global Institute study, in 2020 companies in Possible solutions: Always stay in search of new (not obligatory costly) ways to promote your service/product. Nurture your prospective workers as you nurture your leads. Go beyond the LinkedIn messages to attract your ideal candidate. Make sure you offer value to your employees, as well as they do.

9. #5 Challenge Cybersecurity The issue of cybersecurity evolves in direct proportion to the increase of the use of technology and the internet on a daily basis. The more complex the online world becomes, the more complicated is to deal with all types of cyberattacks. Possible solutions: Do backups regularly. Install anti-phishing software to protect your network systems and sensitive data of both your company and workers. Implement two-factor or multi-factor authentication making it harder for hackers to access the account. Update your software regularly as application vulnerability is one of the most common reasons for cyber attacks. Educate your employees to clearly communicate the impact of cyber-attacks and talk about the up-to-date ways of its prevention.

10. #6 Challenge Building trust with potential clients without the possibility to meet. The measures against the spread of coronavirus made adjustments to the way we do business. The impossibility to organize face-to-face meetings confused many entrepreneurs, whose strategy was based on in-person communication. Possible solutions: Hyper-personalization is still a hot trend for 2021. This concept is aimed at the delivery of only relevant content, product, and service information, personalized to every user's need. Record video. Yes, it may seem being too simple but personalized video content is a powerful way to engage and build relationships even at a distance.

11. #7 Challenge Making yourself replaceable by building a management team. The issue of cybersecurity evolves in direct proportion to the increase of the use of technology and the internet on a daily basis. The more complex the online world becomes, the more complicated is to deal with all types of cyberattacks. Possible solutions: Be ready to put time & effort into teaching and mentoring your employee. Give your deputy the freedom to make decisions and learn from their mistakes after the traineeship is over. Make it clear to your successor you trust them but still be ready to support and answer their questions. Don't worry if nothing works, I'm still searching for the ways to replace myself.

12. Conclusions One of the respondents mentioned keeping the doom and gloom away from the positive message the company conveys. And I totally agree with this point. After going through the challenges of 2020 it's important for each of us to keep supporting our employees and customers, believing something good is about to happen. Even the hardest challenges we face seem to be easier when you're surrounded by the community. Let's stay connected! Kseniia Linkedin JellyFish.tech

13. About Jellyfish.tech Jellyfish.tech is the Ukraine-based web & mobile development agency to guide you through the full cycle of an application creation, modernization, or adding a new feature. Our areas of expertise: The Jellyfish.tech team helps you do the product discovery & create MVP in 5 weeks using the winning combination of the technologies to validate your idea before your rivals do. Quick MVP creation. Legacy software modernization. Working on a large software modernization project (pure JS to Angular) for a few years already, we learnt to manage every little detail important to deliver the quality and up-to-date product. We create the new opportunities, applying the recent technologies, which reduces the system maintenance costs, helps acquire new users and retain the existing customers. We know exactly what's happening on the education technology market and how we can improve users' online learning experience. Jellyfish.tech is determined to help experts & learners around the world adapt to new learning conditions based on our digital transformation expertise. Edtech. We specialize in the creation of cost-effective marketplaces from the research & discovery to deploy & support in different domains (education, human resources, lifestyle, etc.). Connecting customers and service providers on a user-friendly platform with multiple perks is easy with Jellyfish.tech. Marketplaces. JellyFish.tech