When people ask questions like “how can CEO compensation be so high for person X? There is no way they add that much value to the company”<p>What they forget is that even a CEO that adds little to no value over time, is phenomenally more positive for the baseline of a company than one who derails the entire company. And the fact of the matter is that it’s easy as a CEO to detail a company and 99.999% percent of people would likely do without ever thinking their actions or inaction was what caused it.<p>It can happen as innocently as just passively assuming that your CFO is fully capable of managing all the finances, or assuming everything is perfectly fine with your technology because “it’s just a simple thread mill” or by assuming that all media coverage is good media coverage so just ignoring how your brand is managed.<p>Now of cause everyone is thinking “I’d never do that if I was the CEO of a company”. But these are all the known examples you have in front of you, everyone things they be able to sail the titanic around the iceberg, even if they have no sailing experience at all, yet it wasn’t a random guy of the street who managed the ship when it happened. The important part is putting your attention on the right points. A CEO who is micromanaging the finances, the branding and the technology is also going to be a huge problem for a company. As a ship captain who spends 16hours staring after icebergs every day is also going to be ineffective. And there might be other potential bombs in other companies that need attention.<p>Point is that being a great CEO doesn’t always mean a 10X growth in value. Sometimes it even means just limiting a loss to 5% through a rough patch when most people would have let it go to 25% lost without, sometimes it means to not fumble the ball when life throws a huge opportunity your way. You know like selling personal exercise equipment when every fitness center closes down due to a global pandemic.