Hello, I hope this is the right place to seek advice. I’ve recently been hired as a CEO of a medical marijuana growing facility, I’m interested to hear if anyone is willing to share their own experience, and any advice/tips.
Any at all!
Thank you for reading!
Be a decent human and surround yourself with people smarter than yourself. Remember your team is who will carry you and not the other way around.
Accept being wrong a lot and learning every day from the ones “below” you, these people are most likely experts in their job and you need to keep in mind they may know a lot more about their specific job then you will have time to learn so use them as a resource to understand their point of view and make educated decisions based on those peoples experiences.
Hired as a CEO? Congratulations. You gotta act like you own the place with decision making but that’s a good place to be in (employee shoes still)
So just remember you’re a team of equals.
Have to learn what motivated people to work, and how to keep morale high
What @thesk8nmidget x 1000!
And…
Never forget that your primary focus is on making medicine. Having spent many years in the medical side of cannabis, a phrase often echoed as the creedo of medicinal cannabis is “Patients over Profits”. Helping the people you serve is worth more than money in the bank at the end of the day. This is why people go to and often stay on the medical side. If this is not why you are working in medicinal cannabis, I suggest reevaluating your motivations.
I have also found that when I have been in positions of leadership (be it manager, director, or C-level), reminding myself that I work for my employees, not the other way around, has been of great benefit. My job was always to make their jobs as easy and consistent as possible. The better I did my job, the better they could do their jobs. We are of greater benefit when acting in the service of others.
Yeah @thesk8nmidget nailed it.
Nothing is worse than the boss who thinks he/she knows more than his/her subordinates about everything. We have all probably worked for one at some point.
Your job is to help them do their job. Not the other way around. Work for them, in a sense, and they will reciprocate. When someone likes their boss, they usually respect them more. When they respect you, you will get a LOT more out of them than if they hate working for you. Keep your tribe happy and they will take you far.
Don’t put a recent graduate who has never grown weed in charge of a warehouse full of it, just because they have a botany degree.
Experience usually beats education when it comes to running an operation of any type. Thats not to say you shouldnt keep that educated person from working with the experienced person. If anything have them work together and become an unbeatable force of knowledge and experience.
Yes!
we had a badass chemist in our lab for a bit. He was completely the opposite of most of the team. Extremely educated, brash, very arrogant, had never smoked weed in his life, and honestly kind of a douche, but between him and a couple lab techs that were straight wooks and had been extracting for years, we cranked out some badass product. Those were the good ol days lol
That poor chemist was probably like i didnt go to school to be stuck in a lab with wook sweat and dirty hippies. 
He was exactly like that lmao. Probably part of the reason he didn’t stick around for more than a few months. But we sure did learn a lot from him in those few months.