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Ending the cult of the CEO

managementtoday.co.uk

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Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#131

Post by gavinpc »

elihu wrote: post #36

The way I look at it, there are two kinds of CEOs. There are the ones that founded the company and have led the company according to their own personal vision. Many of them hold stock worth billions and they're generally looked up to as "captains of industry". The other kind is the CEO who is hired by the board of directors. They're usually very well paid and given a lot of stock, but aren't wealthy the way, say, Bil…

Without disputing any of your comment, I find it interesting that "the customer" (or what we might call the "end user") is never mentioned in this graph of stakeholders and their competing concerns. Neither customers nor the serving of any sustainable purpose are mentioned in TFA either, although outside investors are added to the mix. The ideal business model would be (I should say, is) to make money without doing any particular thing at all. Indeed, last I heard, that is a growth sector.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#132

Post by gavinpc »

The "cult" underlying this phenomenon is our celebrity culture. We fetishize the 0.01%. The role of overpaid CEO is established; it no longer needs any more special justification than top athletes, entertainers, or TV "personalities."

Conveniently, we have lots of companies that need saving. And it seems to me that, for a country where people still like to pretend there's a "free market," we sure hate to see companies fail. I think of the old saying, "Many a good hanging has prevented a bad marriage." But hey, who asked me.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#133

Post by lacampbell »

knieveltech wrote: post #126
lacampbell wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're generally either an employer or an employee in a modern economy. Is this news to anyone?

I feel like you are missing or intentionally ignoring the point here.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#134

Post by tensor »

harryh wrote: post #103
kelnos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though: as the size of the company, customer count, and revenue numbers increase, the founder/CEO has less and less _directly_ to do with that. If I found a company and directly hire 10 people and act as a day-to-day leader where everyone reports to me, you can say that I had a large impact on everything that happened. Two years later, when we have 300 people, I'm out of the day-to-day hiring decisio…

Here are some decisions that you might be faced with when holding the CEO job at a 300 person company: - The New York Times has just written an article about how your company mined user data and sold it in a nefarious way. But this sort of sale is critical to your business model. What do you do? - You hired a VP of Sales 6 months ago who interviewed better than anyone you have ever met and came with glowing recommend…

In situations with multiple founders, many of these questions are tackled together. Yet the other founders are rarely mentioned in the media.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#135

Post by killjoywashere »

elihu wrote: post #36

The way I look at it, there are two kinds of CEOs. There are the ones that founded the company and have led the company according to their own personal vision. Many of them hold stock worth billions and they're generally looked up to as "captains of industry". The other kind is the CEO who is hired by the board of directors. They're usually very well paid and given a lot of stock, but aren't wealthy the way, say, Bil…

You need to read The Dictator's Handbook.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#136

Post by [deleted] »

crdb wrote: post #110
idoh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes non-founder CEOs are worth it and can completely turn around the fortunes of a company. For example, Eisner for Disney, Kroc for McDonald's, Welch for GE, Jobs (the second time around), and either Ballmer or Nadela (depending on which one you pick). So I don't think the founder / non-founder distinction holds up.

I'll give you Eisner, but Kroc's first franchise was the 9th McDonald's overall and he is the sole reason for its international dominance, so he's not a founder only in the technical definition of founder. Technically, Warren Buffett is not the founder of Berkshire Hathaway, the old textile business. As for Welch, GE Capital was a good chunk of GE's revenue and profits... right up to 2008 [1] where it might have sunk…

[deleted]

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#137

Post by jsudhams »

elihu wrote: post #36

The way I look at it, there are two kinds of CEOs. There are the ones that founded the company and have led the company according to their own personal vision. Many of them hold stock worth billions and they're generally looked up to as "captains of industry". The other kind is the CEO who is hired by the board of directors. They're usually very well paid and given a lot of stock, but aren't wealthy the way, say, Bil…

>> pump up the stock value now even if they're bad for the company in the long run

I agree this was the main reason for Dell to become private allowing them to concentrate on long term and i think they have done better as private company than public earlier.

I wonder if it is possible only have retail investor as shareholder who does not care much about strategy as long as they get dividend and stock price kind of keeps a phase rather than always going up.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#138

Post by self_assembly »

tertius wrote: post #125
dahart wrote: post #61

> This focus has a devastating impact on the lives of CEOs... Leaders deserve to be happy too... solving the problems starts with communication... we need to wage war on this picture A whole article about how hard CEOs have it, and not a single mention of CEO pay or the ongoing efforts to even get reporting of CEO pay ratios? I mean I agree that CEOs get a ridiculous amount of stress and an unfair share of credit and…

> I'd start by paying CEOs less. I would say that it's a good thing that you're not king then... And no, the stress of C level jobs does not compare to the mean like you would have it.

I agree that the stress level of C jobs does not compare to the mean. It must be nice not to have to stress about a mortgage, kids college, affordable healthcare and all the other things that ordinary people in western society struggle with.

I think a lot of people would trade stressing about their families financial well being with the needs of the shareholders. I'm not saying it is not a tough job but at the end of the day I don't think CEOs stress compares to regular middle class people just trying to get by.

Re: Ending the cult of the CEO

#139

Post by theprop »

This is true. And not true.

It is SO true that a company is a team effort. It is also sadly true that CEOs get most if not all the credit of what their teams accomplish even if they didn't have much of a part in it. The current CEO "God" Jobs said as much, and in fact had wrong intuitions on a number of the most critical things today in Apple's business... a gigantic one being a hesitance to open up the iPhone to 3rd party apps. I think other Apple team members eventually convinced Jobs (probably didn't take that much effort) to open things up. Jobs was rightfully concerned 3rd party apps could crash your phone which wasn't a good idea!!

That said, when Apple didn't have a strong product-focused leader we saw where it went earlier, and one can see how it's floundering today -- under Cook, Apple was maybe 2 years or more late with a large screen phone and the iWatch is not good at all. Tesla under a certain CEO has in less than 15 years what's widely considered the world's best car...beating few dozen companies with long histories of making cars and limitless resources. Amazon took big risks with AWS, Prime, and many other things and failed miserably many times e.g. the Fire phone...but they have a leader who kept pushing things forward. Compare Amazon to say Walmart (to my view largely the same company it is today that it was 20 years ago) or any other e-commerce company. The visionary leader who can deliver revolutionary products relentlessly really does matter.

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