CEO is a role that will vary noticeably from company to company. But in general, the CEO will sign off on a lot of decisions and make a few ones. Basically, i

CEO is a role that will vary noticeably from company to company. But in general, the CEO will sign off on a lot of decisions and make a few ones. Basically, it's like this: If your subordinates come to you and are like, "This is absolutely the right thing to do," then you'll 95% of the time sign off on it. If you find that that's not true, it's probably time to fire your subordinates, they apparently aren't doing a good job. If subordinate A comes to you and says, "We should do X," and subordinate B comes to you and says, "We should do mutually exclusive thing Y," then you may need to decide between them. CEOs should also ideally have a strategic sense and say things like, "Guys, I want us to look at doing something like thing Z. Research it and tell me your conclusions," when everyone else thought that there was no decision to be made at all -- just keep chugging along.