[esarbe]

> CEOs make important decisions about how a company is run and its future.

I've yet to work in a (large) company where the CEO is actually relevant. Most of the decisions happen at lower, departmental levels.

In the initial years, CEOs can make or break a company, but after that it's pretty random. You can have a brilliant CEO that just gets stumped and the company goes bust. Or you can have an incompetent CEO that just stumbles from success to success.

In my experience, CEOs get hired because of their old-boys networks that will allow the company to participate to the pay-to-play games with e.g. financial institutes or similar industry handshake-wink-wink-partnerships. They know people that know people, that's it.

[Sevastopol]

If the board is incompetent, then the CEO will usually be incompetent too. A CEO doesn't make every decision for the company, just the important ones. A new CEO has great impact on a company's present and future unless the company is already organized to give /other executives/ most of his or her responsibilities.

At the companies I've worked at, lower levels never make far-reaching decisions for the company.

[esarbe]

In all the companies I've worked at, never has a CEO made a decision that made a company successful. The best thing a CEO can do when it comes to decisions that make a company successful is one thing; recognize good ideas and get the hell out of the way of the people implementing that decision.

That's what incompetent CEOs usually do; they get in the way of competent people doing a heck of a job.

Good CEOs know that they are figureheads and try to stay out of the crucial decision making, handing off responsibilities to people that actually know what they are doing.

[Sevastopol]

> In all the companies I've worked at, never has a CEO made a decision that made a company successful.

Hasn't been the case for me. Even if they didn't come up with, say, a market strategy, they're important in executing it. They lead rather than getting the hell out of the way.

>Good CEOs know that they are figureheads and try to stay out of the crucial decision making, handing off responsibilities to people that actually know what they are doing.

A good CEO makes critical decisions. Handing off responsibilities if they know their limits is indeed part of being a good CEO.

[gameman144]

Is this a case where you know what the CEO does day-to-day and don't find it relevant? Or that you're not sure what the CEO spends their time doing?

[esarbe]

I know what they spend their time with; golfing and making sure their friends get a cut of the pay by doling out company contracts. Just as they get a delicious cut from their friends companies' contracts.