The Difficult Job of CEO

The role of the CEO entails a remarkable formal power, exercisable in different ways. But power, authority, expertise, and even results are often not enough to truly guarantee success.

Effective CEOs must try to combine formal power and authority with the legitimation they gain when people believe in them as people and as leaders. But they have to earn it, in many different ways, as demonstrated, for example, that they have also values, ethics, fairness, and an altruistic commitment towards the company and its collaborators.

Legitimation gives rise to a motivation that goes far beyond the issuing of orders and can produce extraordinary organizational performance.

Time is probably the most important of the resources  (scarce by definition) with which the CEO must constantly deal. CEO time allocation is not just about meetings or decision-making, but about the whole range of ways in which he/she relates to the organization and its members.

The challenges are not few because the CEO, in general, represents the executive and decision-making body of the company, the subject responsible for the company’s strategy, and responsible for providing the members of the organization with the guidelines to implement it.

The life of the CEO of a large company is not easy. Leading a large company today means learning to manage decisions between complex scenarios, ambitious and short-term goals, and coming to terms with an ever shorter working life expectancy. And while it is undeniable that managers have a great deal of resources and support on their side, it is they, more than anyone else, who have to deal with the chronic shortage of time.

Compared to even the recent past, the new, more complex reality emerges in all its relevance: if CEOs want to be such, and be so for a long time, they are faced with a large number of interlocutors and must always keep them in mind. The term stakeholder is now commonly used, and since that day we have known that they are all those who have a significant relationship with the company. Usually, we say “stakeholders”, but now the term must be read more broadly because we aren’t talking only about employees, customers, and shareholders, but we are also talking about suppliers, surrounding communities, and the environment.

The CEO, who today has a shorter professional “life expectancy” than the previous generation of leaders, has much more articulated and complex objectives.

The first objective remains that of achieving economic and competitive results such as placing and maintaining the company on the market and keeping it well and successful. But the climate of strong pressure has increased because the community looks at you and public opinion scrutinizes you thanks to technologies digital that make companies glass boxes, the media shoot you at the slightest mistake, and every defaillance remains forever on record in the borderless world of the web.

And, let us remember, the CEO is a multiplier of corporate reputation!!

And all this trying not to be crushed by the weight of the many and growing responsibilities and, perhaps, even trying to have a happy and persistent personal and family life.

We can say that the CEO is the key to creating an organizational ecosystem that encourages new ideas and changes, whose behaviors and attitudes are directly reflected in his relationships, influencing his collaborators and, consequently, the development of his business.

Here, to return to the most important resource I mentioned at the beginning, the most successful people consider it crucial to manage the time they have available.

The matter is very simple: we all have time in the same way. The difference between those who are successful and those who are not is that those who are successful “invest” their time (and therefore have a return) while those who are unsuccessful just waste it.

I look forward to any comments.