A CEO wears many hats—scientist, investor, operator—but their primary, non-delegable function is decision-making. This role requires integrating input from a leadership team that thinks at an enterprise level, enabling the CEO to make the final call on capital, strategy, and people.

Public company boards often hire CEOs using fuzzy adjectives like 'leader.' A better method is to first define 3-5 key strategic goals, creating a 'scorecard of success,' and then find a candidate whose track record specifically matches those objectives.

Strategic decisions, especially painful ones like layoffs or shuttering a project, require removing personal emotion. A CEO's primary responsibility is to the company's strategic health and its investors, even when it conflicts with attachments.

Contrary to the popular advice to 'hire great people and get out of their way,' a CEO's job is to identify the three most critical company initiatives. They must then dive deep into the weeds to guarantee their success, as only the CEO has the unique context and authority to unblock them.

The ultimate differentiator for CEOs over decades isn't just product, but their skill as a capital allocator. Once a company generates cash, the CEO's job shifts to investing it wisely through M&A, R&D, and buybacks, a skill few are trained for but the best master.

CEOs often complain about team failures or external factors. However, they are the ones who hire, set the culture of accountability, and build resilient systems. Accepting that you are the root cause of all problems is empowering because it means you also hold the power for all solutions.

To truly align management with shareholders, Jacobs structures compensation so that equity awards only begin vesting if the company's stock performance exceeds the 55th percentile of its benchmark (e.g., S&P 500). Payouts are doubled for top-tier (95th percentile) performance, ensuring rewards are for outperformance, not just market lift.

Ariel Cohen acknowledges employee morale is 100% correlated with the stock price. He sees his role as a counter-force, continuously focusing the team on strong internal metrics and the 2-to-10-year journey, conditioning them to treat daily market fluctuations as irrelevant noise to the real business performance.

Serial acquirer Brad Jacobs boils down his complex business strategy to two core objectives: growing organic revenue faster than the market and continuously expanding profit margins. Every decision is evaluated against its ability to move one of these two levers, providing a clear and powerful framework for creating shareholder value.