There is an old joke about a journalist who asks three CEOs the same question: What is the secret of your success? Amazingly, they all answer the same way, asking, ‘How did you get into my office?’
There is a subtext to the joke which is all too real, and not funny at all, which relates to why the CEO of a company is disproportionately important. In some ways it’s obvious. As the person at the apex of the organisational pyramid, the CEO is a vital cog in the wheel.
But I’m talking about something beyond contextually important, which is the dramatic effect great CEOs tend to have on their companies. It’s not just about being at the apex; it’s more.
I think it comes down to something quite simple: There are hundreds of people in most large organisations who can and do say, “no”. There is only one person who can say “yes”, and that is the CEO. All important decisions about what to do, rather than what not to do, can only be made with the acquiescence of the chief executive. There are some things only the CEO can do.
The vision thing
Saying “yes”, if you think about it, is almost the same as what some people call — much more grandly — having “the vision thing”. A hallmark of great CEOs is that they can plot a set of actions which engender results that customers like.
How did Steve Jobs know that people would love a telephone without a physical dialling mechanism? Simple. He believed it so. He had the vision thing. He conjured, in his mind, a result that could be implemented in a cost-effective manner that customers would pay for. So, when the phone without a dial was proposed by the then senior vice president of Apple’s design team, Jonathan Ive, he said “yes” — and the rest is history.
Having a creative vision and being in a position to implement it are absolute prerequisites for a successful company. Perhaps that’s not entirely true: there are hundreds of CEOs who are pretty successful just steering an existing successful business through economic waters. In this case, the vision was created by someone else, and the successor CEOs just surf that vision. I suspect this is often why founder-CEOs are often so successful: they are implementing a vision they conceived, and they do so with great passion.
The Ramaphosa thing
This is all rather basic ...