CEO! The well known but little understood job title.

Meetings! Fancy Car! Well Dressed Person!

 

This is what the majority of us visualize when we hear someone is a CEO.

 

A CEO is probably the most important individual in an organization. However, we never see a CEO working his ass off, he always seems to be in a meeting or emailing or messaging someone. So, what does a CEO do and why is he so important?

 

In general understanding, a business exists to make a profit, that’s it. Without money, there is no business, and all that money does not come for free, they sell something for that money, it may be their time, a service or a product.

 

A software development company sells their expertise and valuable time of gullible software engineers.

E-commerce may sell t-shirts, pants or books (in the hope that one day it will become like Amazon).

A cafe sells tea, coffee, or whatever fancy drink you like.

 

Business, a money-making machine, however, needs all of these to be managed properly. 

 

For a T-shirt to be sold, customers like you should know the business, trust the business, and be convinced that it is the right fit for you. And to make their brand familiar to you, they place larger-than-life billboards in roads that do not matter, spam you with offers in email and social media. To build trust with you, they show people like you being satisfied with products you may buy, yes very confusing terms.

Then again, an organization has to hire people, “experts”, to make those billboards, write those emails, call you or convince you into buying something you probably do not need or maybe do need. Again, these experts do need to be paid, a ton of money, to do their jobs. But it doesn't end there, does it? Now, the business has to make sure that you are satisfied and all these experts get paid, also provide the government that the money you give to these businesses is actually “white” and not some evil money, obviously by paying the government a commission, “TAX”, and legal fees. It’s a long and complicated web, even Spiderman would be confused.

 

However, unlike Spiderman, emerges a hero, who thinks he can manage it all, has thoughts of what the future will be like and is confident or crazy enough to believe in himself. He believes he can just add, “Innovation”, “World Changing”, “Futuristic” and all those buzzwords to each of his conversations. 

 

Then the reality hits, he needs to manage the people, control how his product is marketed, how to convince you that you need the product, how to keep record of what you buy, how to keep record of work done, who is important and who is not (you are not), how to keep the shareholders happy by telling them stories about how they will be millionaire or billionaire, how to provide the devices that people need, how to keep track of those devices, and probably thousand of questions like these.

 

He thinks he can do it all, but deep down he says, “I cannot do all these by myself”. So, from some self-help book, he devises an evil plan, “Divide and Rule”. (evil laugh)

 

He creates a caste system, dividing people by what they do, a system that has been in conflict since forever. However, all those self-help and war books he has read come in to help him. Then instead of a caste system, he calls them, “Departments' '.

 

 

Now, the CEO has all the power of narcissists, liar, heartless, and some good people, he is set to make a profit and make a name for himself. 

 

But working with such lunatics comes with a price, complaining that some idiot crashed the production server, so the business is no longer making money, sometimes a racist statement from the marketing team, someone from customer service no longer willing to live the lowlife. 

 

How dare they? 

Then again there are investors, who only got 10 million this year when he should have earned 12 million. 

 

And all this chaos always needs some lies and sometimes the truth, he then sets on a new mission to help these helpless people, and calls it a “meeting”. 

 

Now, you know why he is meeting all the time.

 

With such a huge web to manage, he does need money. He promises new investors more money in the future for a piece of share in the company and power over his soul. 

 

The investor has now power to change the way the CEO acts on a major decision. The CEO, being a fox and investor needing babysitting from time to time, hatches a big meeting with a lot of food and drinks (so the investor does not see how bad he is), and calls in a “Board Meeting”.  A meeting of people who have power over the CEO’s soul.

 

A board meeting is one of the most important meetings for the CEO because it gives a chance to the CEO to make a huge boast if the company does good or make a creative lie about the economy, customers, team or something if the company cannot provide enough money to the investor.

 

Managing such a huge web of narcissists, clueless people and self-righteous people is surely a challenge. And that is why he gets perks, MONEY, FAME and POWER. He also gets to travel in style and gets to dress up well, to hide all his insecurities.

 

And that is what a CEO does, living among narcissists to create something out of nothing, meeting with people who think their life is their number one priority, “How dare they?”. 

 

This is a really challenging job that is a play of power, lies and sometimes a true chance to shape the future for millions of lives (the good part).

 

Welcome!