| I think this severely underplays the importance of providing guidance and vision. It also underplays the importance of credibility and social connections. It underplays the importance of leadership, setting the right examples. It seems like you can reduce everything at numbers and stuff just..works.. But the bigger the company the more management positions are political as much as they are business. Having a very respected individual talking to a bank executive a new loan deal, or the town hall to voice a company's needs (see Jobs going personally to Cupertino's meeting halls to express the importance of their new offices and what they brought to the community), or to engage with important investors. I think this is so discounting of the role of the CEO that the article loses credibility. It is definitely true that too many CEOs seem to actually be void of any form of accountability, but that's a problem of our society at every scale where when something bad happens it's never somebody's fault. But, to summarize, till a business is run by humans, great human leaders are a great necessity. |
But for an organization to operate in human society, with human customers and employees, having some sort of "socially savvy alpha male" is very imported, and very often underrated.