The CEO can really make a huge difference. I've worked in a major company ( global - 10s of thousand of employees ) where the chairman and CEO were changed and

The CEO can really make a huge difference. I've worked in a major company ( global - 10s of thousand of employees ) where the chairman and CEO were changed and it was like night and day. The company changed from one that was driven too much by short term pressure from money men investors, to one that took a much longer term view and invested in R&D and inhouse skills. Note the change in management was instigated by some of the larger, longer term investors ( pension funds etc ) - ie not all capital is short term. The new CEO put together that long term vision - said investment now ( and so lower EPS now ) will result in substantial longer term bottom line growth - had to persuade the markets etc. They were successful, and it's sort of self-fulling - the short term capital leaves and you get more longer term investors that matches that longer term vision ( obviously the spiral can go the other way ). However - that's the easy bit - delivering growth - at some point it's not possible to sustain that level of growth - then selling the idea you need to invest to standstill is much harder. The CEO - also have to fight-off opportunists - where the problem is the maths is often in favour of buying a company, stripping/milking the assets and sacking the people. Note sometimes it's only capital efficient because the capital doesn't need to pay the full social costs of the company destruction - it's governments job to make sure they do.