CEO – Hailed & Reviled

Chief Executive Officers are hailed as “Corporate Saviours” and also reviled as “Corporate Rascals and Scoundrels.” It all depends upon which side of the fence the CEO is perched—success or failure. The corporate world, like most other aspects of life, is ruthless. It acclaims with lightning speed and crushes with tsunamic effect.

The role of a CEO is to be a leader. The leader ensures that all constituents within the organisation work homogeneously towards shared, common, identifiable goals and objectives. It is the job of the CEO, under the guidance of the Board of Directors, to enshrine both the “Vision” and “Values” of the organisation.

Investopedia interestingly defines the CEO in a very narrow sense: “The Chief Executive Officer is the highest-ranking executive in a company whose primary responsibilities usually include major corporate decisions and managing the overall operations and resources of a company.” This definition is too general and far too liberal. CEOs do more than just that. They build organisations through strategic planning, thinking, and execution, while simultaneously adopting the best practices of a work culture.

The CEO is the nominated spokesperson for the entity, an ambassador at large, who is expected to interact with the outside world to present the credentials of the company—its products and services—while retaining, protecting, and championing the “reputation” of the organisation. The CEO is answerable to the Board and shareholders for the Return on Equity (ROE), for increasing the bottom line, and for hiring the best human resources complement. To regulators, the CEO is responsible for every single thing; in the case of the CEO, the buck literally stops at their desk. The job description (JD) of a CEO is, in short, an endless list.

The role of a CEO is, in many aspects, quite unique compared to others in the organisation. Firstly, there is an expectation that the CEO has answers to all questions and is a problem fixer. Secondly, the CEO is someone who must be looked up to as a coach, mentor, and guide. These expectations arise from the position held, not necessarily because the CEO is highly knowledgeable.

Finding solutions to problems and guiding staff are not the only responsibilities of a CEO—it goes far beyond that. The master-guru of management, Peter Drucker, wrote in 2004: “The Chief Executive Officer is the link between the inside, that is, the ‘Organisation,’ and the outside—society, economy, technology, markets, and customers. Inside there are only costs. Results are only on the outside.”

From being a visionary to ensuring things are done right, the primary responsibility of the CEO is vast. The Board and market act as the direct “supervisors” of the CEO, making them accountable. To use Peter Drucker’s words, there can be no “inside” if there is no “outside,” and vice versa. It therefore follows that the CEO must manage, or have the ability to assemble, a requisite team of senior management that can create the “inside” to meet the challenges of the “outside.”

The President/CEO of a financial institution I once worked for coined a new management concept: “The art of discovering the invisible possibles.” Mr. Agha Hasan Abedi, as a CEO, excelled in finding markets that were in absolute obscurity to large international financial institutions. He relied heavily upon historical trade routes between cultures and tapped into their potential with great success across 73 countries. Through clarity of vision, this was achieved in less than two decades. The speed of Abedi unnerved the regulators. Regardless of his eventual fate, Abedi’s actions continue to inspire and leave their mark on the global financial landscape. Many imitators have tried to emulate him, but in vain.

The job of a CEO is both extremely simple and highly complex. The CEO must have clarity of vision, developed in consultation with the Board. It is a basic expectation that the CEO would be in a better position to see beyond the known and visible and have the skill to identify future market potential. Another significant ability relates to technical proficiency; the CEO must be a subject matter expert in at least 2–3 principal areas of the business. They must be a sort of jack-of-all-trades—specialists in a few critical areas but largely generalists. No division of the organisation should remain obscured, at least not to the CEO. The hierarchical vantage point gives them a unique oversight advantage.

The propensity to start doing the work of others is a major ailment of uninitiated CEOs. They are meant to have work executed through competent coworkers, not roll up their sleeves. While that is the general rule to abide by, it is, in my view, beneficial to occasionally go into the ranks of the organisation and be seen “pushing the pencil” alongside a junior colleague. This fosters esprit de corps and demonstrates prominently that the CEO “knows” the “inside” too.

To onlookers, a CEO with no papers on the desk might appear idle. However, such moments are often when the CEO is engaged in their most important task—imagining where the institution should be heading. Strategic thinking and planning dominate their role. Most employees in an organisation are tasked with “doing work” with minimal input into “thinking.” By contrast, the job of a CEO is to “think” more and “do” less. Doers are plentiful; thinkers are rare. As an example, in undivided India, among millions of Muslims, there was only one thinker, Iqbal, and one thinker-doer, Jinnah, who envisioned carving out a new nation from the subcontinent.

By a similar comparison, from 1949 to 1976 in the People’s Republic of China, the only thinker was Mao Tse-tung, while the most able CEO to execute that blueprint was Premier Zhou Enlai. In our context, readers may recall that when Gen. Pervez Musharraf called himself “Chief Executive,” the country was set on a path of economic recovery. However, when he assumed the title of “President” (regretfully on misguided advice), the slide into the abyss began—and the rest is history.

Trouble brews in institutions, especially in our local culture, when the lines of demarcation between the owner of a business and the CEO of an organisation become blurred. Owners must avoid the temptation of micromanaging the business and interfering with the CEO’s role. Some entrepreneurs are so deeply involved in day-to-day operations that they reduce the CEO to a “corporate invalid,” retained merely for show. Such CEOs are neither allowed to think nor to act. In the local corporate culture, there remains a significant demand for “spineless CEOs.”

The skills and qualifications for becoming a CEO are not standardised. Steve Jobs and other successful dropouts have created more enterprises than those who passed through Eton, Harrow, Oxford, or the Ivy Leagues. However, a CEO must have the ability for strategic thinking and the skill to design organisational architecture to achieve profitable results. They must possess strong character, a resilient attitude, attention to detail, and the tenacity to adapt to the rapid changes of the marketplace. Integrity and honesty must remain a given—qualities that require no proof or evidence. Truth, when placed at the altar, is usually crucified the moment it seeks the crutches of corroboration and evidence. CEOs are truthful; they simply cannot be otherwise.

A CEO must never be inclined towards short-term gains. The objective must be to create an institutionalised business that lives on as an unselfish legacy.

My predecessor at a bank, Mr. Saleem Akhtar, while handing over the baton to me upon my assumption of office as CEO, quoted the following lines from Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” Despite having functioned on numerous occasions as Acting CEO, I took his Shakespearean reminder quite seriously. The constant apprehension I felt was not born of guilt, as was the case with the king in the play, who stole the crown from Richard II and had him murdered. Rather, it stemmed from the looming global economic crisis that was expected to hit us locally—and it did, ferociously, in 2007–2008.

I was my predecessor’s nominee for the position, so there was no palace coup. If any reader imagines the life of a CEO is all-powerful and free of challenges, let me confirm that there are more intrigues in the corporate sector than in Islamabad. I have been a victim of these intrigues—not once, but twice. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings” (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar).

William Shakespeare provides remarkable solace in dealing with human treachery and deception.

Sirajuddin Aziz
The writer is a Senior Banker & Freelance Columnist.