The job of a CEO is to make decisions

The most difficult job in the world is to make decisions. Many people can be clever and give advice, and most people are able to implement the decisions they make. But only a few can take responsibility and decide what to do. It is a privilege. A privilege in the sense that not everyone is capable of making decisions on a repeated basis for a long time.

People invented elections not only to protect themselves from dictatorship and usurpation of power. But also because it is incredibly difficult to be a leader for long. That’s why, in companies, CEOs are chosen by the founders or members of the BoD. People literally choose a person to make decisions.

The CEO can be compared to the monster from the IKEA meme. A living being sits and answers questions. Sometimes open, sometimes closed. If a CEO is successful, there aren’t many questions, and they can take care of the strategy. It is also true that afterwards they will have to defend the strategy in front of the BoD and sell it to the employees, which will again generate a large number of questions. There’s nothing to be done here, that’s the role.

Some founders once came up with the ideas and grew the company. Now they, either directly or through the BoD, just want to choose from the options offered. It’s up to the CEO and his management to come up with these options. To make up the options you have to make decisions.

But it’s not enough to come up with them, you have to reach the goals. Here the most difficult part of the work is to mobilize employees to achieve the goals. After all these goals don’t matter to them, in general the employees have their own concerns. Here the method of change management comes to the rescue. People go through a series of activities, literally soaking them up with the new goals. If they do well, then employees believe that these are their goals. If poorly, you get boring strategy sessions that everyone goes to in order not to work and to please the boss.

Do you still want to be a CEO?