In your opinion, what characterizes a good CEO of a medium-sized company?

Transparency.
This company I used to work with had a monthly townhall where everyone could learn how things were going (good or bad), long term and short term plans, and so forth.

And during a downturn in 2020, things went badly, and there was open and honest information about it all. To paraphrase: "We cannot say now that there won't be layoffs. But we will do everything we can to avoid it through other cost saving measures. This includes cutting executive pay by 20% as of immediately." While there ended up being layoffs (which included severance packages), the pay cuts never hit any of us working "on the floor" - top brass only.

Overall, it was a company I enjoyed working for. Sadly they were acquired by a competitor last year, and that business culture came to an end. I left for greener pastures a few months ago.

39

That sounds like a good employer with some reasonable management. What industry was that, if you don't mind me asking?

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- Offshore seismic survey
  
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Be competent at what your company actually does (as opposed to viewing everything through spreadsheets). View people as assets not as cost factors. See it as your job to empower your employees to do what they're good at. Have a long term perspective of how you want to develop the company and what you see as success factors (as opposed to just staring at quarterly numbers). tl;dr: don't be an MBA.

33

This.

Or a dead one

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Long term strategic thinking, experience to understand when trends and short-term solutions would be long-term mistakes, and the ability to avoid directly questioning someone with a skillset they don't have themselves about technical or complex issues.

Go through an intermediary. Like a department head.

The developers, engineers, and architects don't need your help, they need you to set logical long-term goals, hire good department heads, and schmooze with other CEOs in the same space.

17

Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff? It doesn't have to be a meeting with presentations, expectations and all that. Don't you think that management could use your help and advice to make good strategic decisions in the long term?

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- Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff?
  
  I mean questioning as in second-guessing the people who actually know stuff. Not asking experts for their honest thoughts.
  
  Don’t you think that management could use your help and advice to make good strategic decisions in the long term?
  
  Management is one thing - C-levels is yet another kettle of fish.
  
  In my experience C-levels rarely want the technical answer to a question, and will be personally insulted / defensive if the answer is something they don't understand. And they will ask their questions in such a way as to insult the expert. Two negative results that don't help the business in any way.
  
  But Dept heads and the PM office will often be able to explain why certain choices were made, and how that aligns with the business needs, without the complexities that cause misunderstanding between two people of such wildly divergent skillsets.
  
  Now if the CEO can also write the code, or run the wetlab instruments, and really does want the nitty-gritty, complex technical answer, that is a different story. And rarely the case in my career.
  
  3
- Why not consult the people who actually know their stuff?
  
  You do to some extent, mainly to verify that the technical aspects underpinning the decision is sound. However:
  
  By going past the department head, you are cutting out the person who is likely going to be responsible in implementing the decision. It can be frustrating implementing a decision that you had little input on.
  
  The technical expert may not fully understand the non-technical ramifications of a decision. What sounds like a small change could end up costing millions or have regulatory implications.
  
  3

look up a guy named Dan Price. Dude saw his Ice Cream company failing and chose to slash his pay exponentially to offer living wages and benefits to everyone else, and business fucking boomed for it. There are literal chapters in economics textbooks about what he did.

9

Unfortunately, that dude was relatively recently charged with SA allegations / rape.

His wife also accused him of beating her.

I believe charges were dropped but it definitely cast a shadow over his public good guy persona.

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- It speaks a lot about the justice system fairness that even if charges dropped no one believes it.
  
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- Here's a NYT article about the allegations, pretty disturbing stuff. If you're not aware, coming forward with charges like this is incredibly difficult, and traumatizing. So the fact that so many women came forward against him, is not something so easily dismissed. Much like with drumpf, when there's this much smoke, you don't have to speculate about the presence of fire anymore.
  
  1

Honestly, compentcy around the product line and customer base, humility to reach out to the experts in the company for decisions, industry connections, actually being available and listening to employee feedback and confidence in decisive action born out of the latter items.

7

The best CEOs I've seen (across all sizes of corporations) have a passion for the product/services they sell and the customers they sell to.

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