The Role of The CEO

The Chief Executive Officer of a company is the most important person within the company structure. The CEO’s responsibility is to relay the vision of the company, both internally and externally. The CEO is responsible for setting the perception and tone of the company, while skillfully laying the groundwork, through strategic networking to foster the continued economic well being of the company.

The number one goal of the CEO is for the vision to be relayed clearly to the external partners, consumers, business leaders, and vendors, while insuring that all employees understand the vision, direction and goals of the company. The CEO must be adept at insuring that all employees can skillfully advance these goals while conducting their day to day business. Most of all the CEO must be proactive in in identifying hostile challenges and acting strategically to nullifying them before they become unmanageable.

It is a tall order. Many MBA professionals have entered into CEO positions only to find the waters tough in navigating through the maze of a constantly changing business landscape. The challenges of today’s economy make these goals and success in achieving them, a challenge to say the least.  What are rates of success for CEO faced with these challenges? There are many examples.

Larry Page was the founding CEO of Google, under his leadership Google grew to over 200 employees and profitability, before he moved to his new position of President of Products.  Because of Google’s vision and its tendency to be on the cutting edge of innovation and growth, Google grew to unprecedented growth, evolving into the premier search engine on the internet.  The vision that fueled Google’s growth was driven by free technological thinkers and the ability to think and anticipate trends in technology.

Page had the vision to create a high tech environment, where people really felt comfortable working at Google. The vision was to create an atmosphere conducive to the free expression of ideas; While presenting user technology that met the needs that changing technological innovation created.

Google today has involved in a number of areas, now offering free internet mail series incorporating the blogs, document management, photo management, a and a number of other applications,  that allow users to access information at anytime, from any computer. Sort of a traveling office, all you need is access to a computer and the internet. Google joined the internet advertising mix, by creating Ad Words, which has generated hundred of dollars in online advertising sales.

Google growth is unprecedented and today they are the most innovation search engine company,  far out distancing Yahoo it nearest competitor. The recent news that Microsoft  offer to purchase Google, as created quite a buzz, because of the ramifications. So Google is faced with an immediate challenge that threatens it very existence.  Google’s leadership,  namely it current CEO, will have to find a quick answer to the advances of Microsoft.

As you can see from the Google example, the leadership of the CEO is critical in order to meet challenges, not only from competitors, but form a changing business marketplace.   The mold has been cracked and a new one has evolved. Creating a need for all companies to think strategically not just for profit now, but for their very survival.  Strategic moves from competitors to take over the market share through consolidation caught Google by surprise.  The CEO was caught napping. This cannot in any way happen in today’s market place.