CEOs are faking it, Stanford professor says - CEOs deserve less credit for their company's fortunes than they receive

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/07/22/HNceosfakingit_1.html

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
July 22, 2005

Your company's chief executive might be a pretender, and that may be a good thing, according to Stanford University Professor of Management Science and Engineering Robert Sutton.

Sutton, the author of a 2001 study of corporate innovation, "Weird Ideas that Work," says that a close look at the evidence shows that chief executive officers (CEOs) probably deserve less credit for their company's fortunes than they receive, and that the best of them manage a tough balancing act: secretly aware of their own fallibility, while also realizing that any sign of indecisiveness could be fatal to their careers.

"In just about every study I've ever seen ... the amount of control a leader has over the company is exaggerated," Sutton said, speaking during a keynote address at the AO05 Innovation Summit at Stanford Thursday. Although top executives of the largest companies are often considered uniquely powerful, their effectiveness actually dwindles as companies get larger, he said. "If you look at these Fortune 500 companies where they get paid a fortune, they have the least impact."

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Too bad these are the guys with the keys to the kingdom.