Becoming of a CEO

I aspire to become a CEO, which would be a consolation for my failure to take the risk of becoming an entrepreneur. To achieve this goal, I have read books such as ‘The CEO Within’ and several series on behavioral economics, including some written by Nassim Taleb.

As I reviewed my decision-making authority in the companies where I have worked, I realized that I had no ‘skin in the game.’ I never opted for ESOPS and based my decision to work solely on being paid for my ‘efforts,’ regardless of ‘results.’ This is not a rational way of building disproportionate wealth within the span of a 30-year work life, and it is a significant anomaly in the corporate world.

This may be more relevant for startups where the founders are constrained when experimenting with experienced professionals, but it may harm companies such as Apple or Google.

In my pseudo decision-making roles, I realized the following:

a. I hardly made decisions that were not reversible.

b. One of the reasons could be that the ‘entrepreneur’ hardly believed in or empowered me to do so.

c. Second, perhaps the compensation structure never covered the ‘risk’ my ‘wrong’ decision could bring to the company.

d. One point of view is how limited delegation the founders allow. The other can be they still need hours of effort from someone skilled for the ‘trial and error’ experiments. But they regret paying for hours of ‘trial and error.’

Therefore, my conclusion is as follows:

a. It is tough to be a CEO working with startups and SMEs.

b. To justify my role, I must demonstrate that I am good at reversible decisions.

c. ‘Irreversible’ decisions are what entrepreneurs love to own.

Hence, I have come to the self-realization that I better stick with my rhetoric of ‘executing business plans’.