The Role of the CEO

The breadth of a CEO’s job is considerable. When reduced to its essentials, however, that job is about optimizing the long-term return from the assets placed at the company’s disposal. Those assets include physical plant and equipment and financial capital from shareholders, creditors, and ongoing operations. Of course, they also include human capital and the systems that are in place to manage it.

As earlier chapters have made clear, these intangible assets are usually the least understood and least optimized. At the same time, the outside world of investors and securities analysts is beginning to ask questions about the quality of people assets and how well they are being developed, retained, and utilized. The net result is an opportunity for CEOs and other executives to improve business performance and communicate something new and valuable to investors. Doing that requires two things: looking inside and looking outside.