General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: From an Ex CEO: Why John Schnatter's comments about a 20 cents add on are laughable. [View all]unblock
(52,436 posts)my issue is that they're called upon to make decisions on too many things in too many areas, and it's impossible to be sufficiently expert in all of them, unless it's a very small company (and even then it's a remarkable feat).
then again, many ceos quickly fail to realize how quickly their expertise can become obsolete. it's quite easy for a programmer who eventually becomes ceo of a software shop to fail to realize that coding practices have changed, the engineering trade-offs that were present "back in the day" are no longer at play, etc.
just as an example, when i used to program i'd spend quite a lot of time optimizing code and databases to speed things up. nowadays memory is so dirt cheap the better solution often is to simply buy more memory. not the greatest example in the sense that most ceos can easily figure that one out, but there are other changes that are harder to grasp.
good ceos adapt and evolve, but many ceos don't.