Making decisions is the least important job of a CEO. Decisions are like ideas: cheap and plentiful. As with ideas, what really makes a company work is executi

Making decisions is the least important job of a CEO. Decisions are like ideas: cheap and plentiful. As with ideas, what really makes a company work is execution. That takes people. Even with AI, it’s still people who are directing the AI, and connecting its work to the parts that AI can’t do yet. Which means the number one job of a CEO is recruiting, retaining, aligning, and inspiring people. So the internal and external jobs of a CEO in 2025 are really mostly the same job: communicating a vision and getting people to execute it. It’s not that different for staff vs investors. To be more specific, the split you propose is really like 5% / 95% in favor of the soft skills. Any decision that can be made with data and analysis is already being made one or more levels below the CEO. That shift happened years ago with the rise of ERP software.