Pardon my venting, but what does a CEO actually do?

[CCIP]

While it's ironic for me to be defending corporate officials, think of this as a question that's kind of similar to "what does the captain of a ship actually do?" It's easy to ask that question in a loaded sort of way, because the captain of a ship does not (and is normally not supposed to) have his hands on the wheels, doesn't actually hit buttons that fire weapons, and usually has less specialist knowledge about any given system on his ship than crew that are assigned and trained specifically for that system. So it might look like captain, or in our case the CEO, isn't doing much to warrant his rank and pay compared to his subordinates that do the stuff, just because he's not physically doing as much as people under his command. But does that mean he's useless?

A CEO, like the captain of a ship, has an executive role, which basically boils down to being the decision-maker and responsiblity-taker. The position is (at least in theory) rewarded for the fact that the person chosen for it is trusted to make the right decisions on behalf of everyone, and to take responsibility for the results - good or bad. Because responsibility always carries risk and requires high levels of trust, the theory is that the person in the top executive position needs to have the best incentives to maintain trust and readiness to make decisions, and offset the ever-present risk of taking the largest measure blame if things go wrong.

Of course in practice that doesn't quite always work that way, but don't underestimate the importance of professional decision-makers. They are key people to running any organization. Ship captains are a good model of exactly that, for example.