Mr. President, meet Mr. CEO. Mr. CEO, I would like to introduce you to the company president.
Oh, you two know each other? Well, that’s for one of two reasons:
1. You are the same person.
2. You two must bump into each other a lot…because you have the same job.
Would someone like to try to explain how “president” and “CEO” came to be two different titles, sometimes held by two different people? And don’t give me the conventional answer. I already know about that: The CEO develops the big-picture strategies, and the president establishes and implements the policies and procedures to make the big-picture strategies successful.
Yeah. I’ve heard that one a million times. Which is a million times more than I’ve actually seen it work. So let’s dispense with that explanation right off the bat. No “president” is content to figure out how to make someone else’s strategy successful. If you give some poor sap that job and try to call him your president, you should be sued—no, jailed!—for the false advertising you put on his business card.
That guy is an executive vice president, an operations director or an office manager. Depending on the size of the company, he might even be the dishwasher. But he’s not the president.
But, D.F., you don’t understand! A CEO is like the chairman of the board!
Yeah. I know. Usually a CEO is chairman of the board. He chairs the board. A president presides. What is the difference between chairing and presiding? There is no difference!
So who decided—and why—to try to split this executive atom and turn one job into two? Are companies out there not top-heavy enough? The most common and hilarious application of the CEO/president separation notion is when the president/CEO sits around and thinks to himself: “You know, I’m a big-idea guy. I’m not a day-to-day detail guy. I need to focus on my visions and let a nuts-and-bolts guy make it all come together and work.”
(Somewhat off-topic: The reason people at the highest levels of business use the word “guy” so often is their desire to sound like regular people. They usually get busted when they start using it to refer to women, but I just thought you’d like to know why this happens.)
At any rate, when the CEO starts thinking these thoughts, it really means: a) I don’t want to have any work to do, and b) How impressive would I look if someone with the title of freaking president was under me?
But it doesn’t end there. To justify hiring someone to do his own job, the CEO rationalizes that he wants someone who “complements” him, which means he doesn’t think anything like him. Ironically, once the new “president” is on board, he rarely gives any compliments to the CEO, precisely because he’s trying to prove to everyone how disorganized the whole shootin’ match would be if he hadn’t been hired.
And so it goes:
- President tells the plant supervisor to stop putting resources into the CEO’s pet rain forest saving project and get back to making table legs because our customers buy table legs from us.
- CEO is horrified to learn that the president’s callousness has endangered the rain forest.
- President writes his own business plan, which makes and sells more table legs and saves fewer rain forests.
- CEO heads off to his Swiss chalet for a few months to grow a beard and ponder this.
- President resigns. CEO resumes duties of both president and CEO, which is actually one job and not two.
- Two years pass. Repeat.
Why would anyone want to be “president” of a company and not actually be in charge? It’s the worst circumstance imaginable. The benefit of not being the boss is that you’re part of the gang and everyone doesn’t complain about you, whisper behind your back and hope you don’t find out they’re looking for new jobs. There’s a lot to be said for that.
But the benefit of being the boss, if you’re into that sort of thing, is that you’re in charge! I personally find this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but if you want to indulge a Napoleon complex, don’t let me stop you. Run the show. You won’t have any friends but who needs friends when you have dictatorial power?
The non-CEO president has no friends and no power. He can go around all day long saying, “You, go there! You, do that! You, pick up those things!” It will work until someone decides they’ve had enough of it, then they’ll go and tell the CEO that the evil president is calling him a dreamer and a mama’s boy behind his back—and is destroying the rain forest with company funds!
President and CEO. Go ahead and add more titles if you like. Chairman. Chief Operating Officer. I actually met a guy once who identified himself as his company’s Big Kahuna. It’s on his business card.
Fine by me. You could add general manager, owner and third base coach for all I care. Just don’t try to tell me it’s more than one job. I suppose hiring eight people for one job then letting them sit around in committee meetings all the time is one way to put off actually making decisions—the bane of some CEOs’ existences.
But can we at least dispense with the fantasy that any difference exists between the jobs of president and CEO? If you’re the boss, and you want to hire a lackey to be boss for you while you sit around and eat bon-bons—and you can actually find someone foolish enough to take the gig—more power to you. But if you do, let’s be clear: You are neither president nor CEO. You are Howard Hughes without the long fingernails.
Yet.
