> I'm fairly sure I could achieve the same results for considerably less.
I'm highly skeptical of that. Not driving the company value to zero is worth a significant amount of money; anyone who has worked under a bad executive or CEO can tell the difference between one that didn't accomplish aggressive goals and one that's objectively bad. If you have a bunch of executive experience, maybe you'd be able to replicate that CEO's performance, but absent that it's more likely you'd cause more harm than just not making the goal.
> If you have a bunch of executive experience, maybe you'd be able to replicate that CEO's performance, but absent that it's more likely you'd cause more harm than just not making the goal.
I doubt this is true. Organisations have inertia, and getting one to change direction or do something different is remarkably difficult. (source: I have been hired as a CEO to change the direction of an organisation. It was difficult).
I strongly suspect that an average person being put into the CEO role would do fine as long as the organisation was basically OK. They'd make mistakes, sure, but everyone makes mistakes. The organisation has ways of limiting the damage of mistakes.
The hard bit about being CEO is taking full responsibility for your decisions with no feedback. You can deal with this in a wide variety of ways; arrogance, narcissism, authoritarianism, or humility, honesty, and teamwork. We tend to see the first three because those kinds of personalities cope well with this kind of difficulty. But that doesn't mean this is the best way to deal with it.
The CEO here is the least likely to be responsible for the increase/decrease in profits/value in that one year. The best you can hope for is a pr boost. Whatever strategy change would not be visible in the short period. Key hires there is not enough time for an impact. Whatever value increase is going to come from vps and everyone down the line. Why not give them the upside on the value they create?
I'm highly skeptical of that. Not driving the company value to zero is worth a significant amount of money; anyone who has worked under a bad executive or CEO can tell the difference between one that didn't accomplish aggressive goals and one that's objectively bad. If you have a bunch of executive experience, maybe you'd be able to replicate that CEO's performance, but absent that it's more likely you'd cause more harm than just not making the goal.