PEOPLE ARE CURIOUS ABOUT THE CEO ROLE

It's been a social week.  I've been with lots of different people in lots of different situations--holiday shopping and gatherings.  In conversation about what kind of work I do with top executives, I got many different reactions.
Many continue to irritate and surprise me with their perception of how innately evil business leaders are.

Anyway, I would turn the tables before too many words were said and ask,
"What are you curious about when you think about CEO's  and their role?"

Here is some of what I got:

—Are all CEO's alike?  Can you make generalizations about the people in the role?

—Is the CEO role abused often?  What are the small abuses not just the large ones we hear about?

—What does a CEO have to watch out for?  What are booby traps?

—What are assumptions of CEO's in general that just aren't true, like people are lazy and need to be pushed to perform?

—Is money the primary reason someone wants to be CEO?

—What on earth does a CEO do that is special enough to justify the money they make?

—Why is it so rare for a company to have every employee be an owner, at least with shares of stock?

—Do you have to be arrogant or have a big ego to be a CEO

—Do CEO's have to give up their idealism to do their job?

There you have it.  Food for thought.  Underlying themes of the conversations
showed that the word "corporate" is a nasty one.  Another is that business is boring and only boring people like it. Or greedy jerks. Do we care about perceptions outside of "business"?  Is PR needed?  Does one big bad story of corruption spoil the whole basket of apples?  I don't know. I just got curious about other peoples' curiosity about CEO's. I got curious instead of angry. The operative word is "curious".  The blind spot to watch for is when your own curiosity dulls.