Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Standing for Chief Executive Officer, the CEO is the individual ultimately responsible for a company’s success and failure. They act as an overseer to various aspects of the company’s operations, including: 

The CEO is also expected to balance the needs of customers, employees, investors, and other shareholders. It is the CEO’s job to ultimately make sure things run smoothly, and they are often the face of the company when it becomes of public interest. They represent the business. Alternative names for the title include managing director and president. 

In addition to overseeing operations, a CEO is usually in charge of long-term strategies with the goal of increasing the value of the company to shareholders. The breadth and specificity of responsibilities for a CEO will depend on the size and type of company. Smaller companies often require the CEO to take a more active role, involving themselves with lower-level responsibilities like hiring. In bigger companies, a CEOs lower-level responsibilities can be delegated to management or other departments. While there is no set list of responsibilities for a CEO, some generally expected ones for all CEOs include: 

A CEO is the top position at a company, however they are still an employee of that company. They report to others, remaining accountable to the company’s board of directors or to shareholders in a publicly traded company. Owners, on the other hand, are in charge of their entire company. Usually in charge of a smaller business than CEOs, business owners will only be held accountable to their customers, because it is entirely their business. CEOs are also appointed the position by a board of directors. They likely have experience in other management positions or running other companies as CEO, and will apply for the job. Business owners have usually founded their business from the beginning and continue to run it. 

The CEO is responsible for hiring for the other C-level positions in the company. It is the CEO’s job to make sure they put together a team of chief positions that will guide and manage the company responsibly and ensure growth and protection of the company’s reputation. Because of their role in hiring other C-level positions, the way these employees perform their duties will also reflect back on the CEO. This is why the CEO usually takes such an active role in hiring for other leadership positions. 

When a CEO leaves a company, there are certain processes in place to ensure smooth CEO succession. Ideally, the CEO will play an active role in selecting their successor, taking part in the interview and selection stages, before explaining clearly their responsibilities and specific concerns relating to that company.A CEO’s leaving, especially from a large, well-known company, is often reported on in the media. Consider the coverage of Jeff Bezos’s decision to step down as CEO of Amazon. As a result of this public coverage of the change in company leadership, there is often a ripple effect that reaches the stock market and impacts the company stock prices. Negative impact on the stock prices can arise from a hasty departure from the original CEO. This suggests to investors that the company or CEO may be trying to cover up something and that it doesn’t bode well for the company’s future, causing its stocks to take a hit. Investors will assess the new CEO to the best of their ability, which is why it is often in the interest of the company to publicise the decision with interviews, a biography of the new CEO, and statement of intentions for the company. Investors want to make sure the new CEO has a good reputation and trustworthy employment history. 

As mentioned earlier, the CEO is responsible for assisting with the hiring of other C-level positions. Those positions include: 

Because there are no legal requirements to appointing chief officers, companies may have many more in leadership positions. The format for the title is CxO, with the ‘x’ representing the potential position the officer could fill. Other positions might include Chief Experience Officer (CXO), Chief Legal Officer (CLO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), and more. 

The CEO of a major company is often a public figure. This is due to interest from shareholders and the general public who use the company’s services, and it is in the interest of the company to present a positive image, which they often do via the CEO. Due to this level of interest on both sides, there have been many notable CEOs throughout history and still continue to be today. Aside from well-known billionaire CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceEx), and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, other CEOs are notable for breaking tradition and rising up from difficult circumstances: