So I work for a large bank in the United States. Me and my coworkers always joke that whenever something bad or inconvenient happens it’s the CEOs fault. Though it’s just a running joke it got me thinking, on a day to day basis what does a CEO actually do? I get the “Chief Executive Officer” nomenclature means they more than likely make executive decisions but what does that look like? Are they at their desk signing papers all day? Death by meeting?
Edit: Holy crap thanks for all the answers I feel like this sub always pulls through when I have a weird question. Thanks guys!
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I read other comments and when I read “set the direction of the company”, I get irritated ‘cause it’s so vague, it doesn’t explain sh!t.
So we are clear that the title CEO does not describe the skills/tasks/expertise of the job but only describes the authority of the person.
So what a CEO foes depends on the experience/skill of the CEO, on the type of business, on the size of the company, and other factors.
If you are a tech engineer and founded a tech company, you are in theory CEO from day 1 but it is a bit ridiculous to use that title when your company has less than 10 people. Anyways, to make the company grow you: 1) code a lot and 2) hire smart people to help you coding and 3) hire people to do other stuff like marketing. As the company grows you do less coding and become more of either a dev Architect or more likely you become more of a Product Manager as your focus will shift more on building features to make your software better. You are still spending time hiring, and you spend time managing teams telling them what to do (coordinating people takes time). Even if you hired an accounting firm, you’ll still need to do some paperwork. If your business relies also on partners, you might spend time making presentations, sending emails and having meetings. Etc.
So you see that a lot depends on the CEO skillset, type of business, and size of the company. There is some constants though. A
CEO will always need to spend time doing the following: 1) hiring the top people in the company 2) managing teams (how you do that depends on you… top managers report to you, or you have regular meetings with presentations, or you just have daily sync ups, etc.) 3) business development (emails, meetings, presentations to find partners) 4) paperwork (legal and accounting)
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