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Imagine you’re on the CEO career path. What behaviours are you going to exhibit in order to pad your resume for the next position? You don’t really care about

Imagine you’re on the CEO career path. What behaviours are you going to exhibit in order to pad your resume for the next position? You don’t really care about the company or the people who work there, you care about the next CEO position that pays more.

Traubenfuchs 7y ago
Exactly, no one wants to be the odd one out when doing things that could be bad for public image.
scarface74 7y ago
I’m just thinking about the big tech companies and which CEOs would think long term. Out of the big 6 tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix are still run by their founders. Microsoft is not run by a founder, but it’s run by a company man with deep understanding of their culture and market. Apple’s CEO is not really technical, I don’t think he has a clue about what customers want, but at least he’s efficient and understands the operations side. But I do think he is more numbers and investor focus than Jobs was. He does know his weaknesses and it seems like he defers to his VPs - a good thing. I think he at least cares about the company. Google has never been able to execute outside of advertising so I’m not sure whether it would matter if the founders were still in charge.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Apologies for the delayed response: your comment did get me athinkin’. > He does know his weaknesses and it seems like he defers to his VPs I reckon, if I ever find myself in the unfortunate position of being in charge of anything that might matter to people in a significant way, either financially or personally, that’d probably be a reasonable way to go about things: defer to your advisors and direct reports. I mean: that is why they are fucking there. At the extremes there are outliers who happen to have been in the right place at the right time to have either been a visionary, or a massive cunt, and succeeded. But, on average, the average leader is fairly fucking average, and would, on average, make better decisions by allowing other, more well-informed, people make decisions for them. Perhaps. Maybe. Some of the time.
  - yellowstuff 7y ago
    Counterpoint: Sometimes "I don't know, what do you want to do?" is exactly the wrong response from a leader, because it leads to delay, confusion, and incoherent and conflicting actions by different people. In my professional life I've been in situations where I was either happy to have a manager who simply made a decision, or unhappy to have someone who deferred them, because having a fast, clear process was more important than making the optimal decision.

Traubenfuchs 7y ago

Exactly, no one wants to be the odd one out when doing things that could be bad for public image.

scarface74 7y ago

I’m just thinking about the big tech companies and which CEOs would think long term. Out of the big 6 tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix are still run by their founders. Microsoft is not run by a founder, but it’s run by a company man with deep understanding of their culture and market. Apple’s CEO is not really technical, I don’t think he has a clue about what customers want, but at least he’s efficient and understands the operations side. But I do think he is more numbers and investor focus than Jobs was. He does know his weaknesses and it seems like he defers to his VPs - a good thing. I think he at least cares about the company. Google has never been able to execute outside of advertising so I’m not sure whether it would matter if the founders were still in charge.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Apologies for the delayed response: your comment did get me athinkin’. > He does know his weaknesses and it seems like he defers to his VPs I reckon, if I ever find myself in the unfortunate position of being in charge of anything that might matter to people in a significant way, either financially or personally, that’d probably be a reasonable way to go about things: defer to your advisors and direct reports. I mean: that is why they are fucking there. At the extremes there are outliers who happen to have been in the right place at the right time to have either been a visionary, or a massive cunt, and succeeded. But, on average, the average leader is fairly fucking average, and would, on average, make better decisions by allowing other, more well-informed, people make decisions for them. Perhaps. Maybe. Some of the time.
- yellowstuff 7y ago
  Counterpoint: Sometimes "I don't know, what do you want to do?" is exactly the wrong response from a leader, because it leads to delay, confusion, and incoherent and conflicting actions by different people. In my professional life I've been in situations where I was either happy to have a manager who simply made a decision, or unhappy to have someone who deferred them, because having a fast, clear process was more important than making the optimal decision.