Yep, and the other piece of this is the stress and expectations. At certain levels literally all that matters is results. To some extent a CEO doesn't care how

Yep, and the other piece of this is the stress and expectations. At certain levels literally all that matters is results. To some extent a CEO doesn't care how the sausage gets made by a given team because he has people that are paid to worry about that. And so the actual "you need to do X, Y and Z" might not be specific things like "overhaul this legacy thingamajig" or something similar, but rather "find a way to grow revenue 20% YoY with a budget that is 10% lower than last year's." The other flip side is the risk--if you want to step up to the plate, at a certain level you need to understand that the stakes are such that if you fail, you likely need to leave or you'll be fired/asked to leave. Not everyone wants that level of responsibility or risk. In my job I oversee one of the biggest sources of spend in the company (ad spend) and am responsible for driving a large part of our growth. If I don't do my job well that has company-wide implications that are present in my mind literally every day. That's a level of ever-present stress that many people don't want.