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> The CEO of a public company is a glorified cheerleader. I find this view limited. If we look at the most successful tech CEOs, they all personally drove the

> The CEO of a public company is a glorified cheerleader. I find this view limited. If we look at the most successful tech CEOs, they all personally drove the direction of products. Steve Jobs is an obvious example. Elon pushes the products of his companies so much that he even became a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering. Jeff Bezos was widely credited as the uber product manager in Amazon. Andrew Grove pushed Intel to sell their memory business and go all in on CPUs. Walton Jr. was famous for pushing IBM to go all in on electronic computers and later the mainframes. The list can go on and on. In contrary, we can see how mere cheerleading can lead to the demise of companies. Jeff Immelt as described in the book Lights Out can be such an example.

alephnerd 2y ago
0-to-1-ing a company is different muscle from managing an established company. Revenue expectations, margins expectations, and investors are entirely different between the two. This is why most founder CEOs tend to either get booted out or choose to keep their companies private as long as possible.
- hintymad 2y ago
  Given the average shelf life of S&P companies, I assume that even an established company needs to go through 0-to-1 all the time. The aforementioned companies all reinvented themselves multiple times. > Revenue expectations, margins expectations, and investors are entirely different between the two. Yeah, it's hard. How the great CEOs achieve their successes are beyond me. I was just thinking that a great CEO needs to drive product changes.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > I assume that even an established company needs to go through 0-to-1 all the time Not significantly. Massive product and strategy pivots are rare because they can fail horribly (eg. For every turnaround like Apple there's a failure in execution like Yahoo) > How the great CEOs achieve their successes are beyond me Luck in most cases. I've worked with plenty of CEOs and in most cases, most people at the C-Suite and SVP level of large organizations are comparable to each other skills and intellect wise. Administration/mid-level management buy-in is also critical. C-Suite doesn't have much visibility into the lower levels of an organization (it's unrealistic), so management is their eyes and ears.
paxys 2y ago
All the CEOs in your example did some great work, yes, but also created a cult following around themselves. They were all shareholder darlings. Most of them are featured in business school textbooks as examples of how to run a company. All this kind of proves the point I'm trying to make. Just being involved in products isn't enough, not by a long shot. You need to make investors go "Steve Jobs is in charge, so the company is in good hands". If you can't do that, you may as well be a mid-level product manager or director or VP doing all those same things.
- hintymad 2y ago
  Makes sense. I was saying that cheerleading is not a sufficient condition, while your point is that cheerleading is a necessary condition.

alephnerd 2y ago

0-to-1-ing a company is different muscle from managing an established company. Revenue expectations, margins expectations, and investors are entirely different between the two. This is why most founder CEOs tend to either get booted out or choose to keep their companies private as long as possible.

hintymad 2y ago
Given the average shelf life of S&P companies, I assume that even an established company needs to go through 0-to-1 all the time. The aforementioned companies all reinvented themselves multiple times. > Revenue expectations, margins expectations, and investors are entirely different between the two. Yeah, it's hard. How the great CEOs achieve their successes are beyond me. I was just thinking that a great CEO needs to drive product changes.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > I assume that even an established company needs to go through 0-to-1 all the time Not significantly. Massive product and strategy pivots are rare because they can fail horribly (eg. For every turnaround like Apple there's a failure in execution like Yahoo) > How the great CEOs achieve their successes are beyond me Luck in most cases. I've worked with plenty of CEOs and in most cases, most people at the C-Suite and SVP level of large organizations are comparable to each other skills and intellect wise. Administration/mid-level management buy-in is also critical. C-Suite doesn't have much visibility into the lower levels of an organization (it's unrealistic), so management is their eyes and ears.

paxys 2y ago

All the CEOs in your example did some great work, yes, but also created a cult following around themselves. They were all shareholder darlings. Most of them are featured in business school textbooks as examples of how to run a company. All this kind of proves the point I'm trying to make. Just being involved in products isn't enough, not by a long shot. You need to make investors go "Steve Jobs is in charge, so the company is in good hands". If you can't do that, you may as well be a mid-level product manager or director or VP doing all those same things.

hintymad 2y ago
Makes sense. I was saying that cheerleading is not a sufficient condition, while your point is that cheerleading is a necessary condition.