[TheOtherHobbes]

A stable company with good people will run itself. There may be execution issues, but the good people should be able to handle those.

The value-adds from a good CEO are outstanding strategy, positive corporate brand creation, and investor/shareholder relationship management.

The first two aren't hard in the bureaucratic sense, but in the creative sense. A lot of CEOs are terrible at them - see the long list of companies run into the ground by very poor decisions.

The last one is helped a lot by having the correct class background. It's nightmarishly hard for outsiders, and can be anywhere from not hard at all to equally nightmarish for insiders.