Crazy CEOs

Actually, the title is tautologous (and repetitive) since I have come to the conclusion that all CEOs are crazy. And I have the data to back it. In my 16 years of working I have had the dubious honor of running into quite a few CEOs, and this seems to be the one common trait among all of them.

Note that I am not saying that the CEOs in my sample were weren't effective or successful or smart. They were usually all three. But I found out that all of them have a different view of reality than the rest of the world, and a different thought process to go along with it. And at the end of the day, that is what the definition of crazy is.

Actually, I have concluded from my experiences that one has to be somewhat crazy to be a CEO. Because everyone else knows what the company's resources are for what can and can't be done, what is possible to promise customers and Wall Street, how to treat people like fellow human beings, and that the world doesn't revolve around their own schedule. But CEOs have none of this conventional thinking, and maybe this is what enables them to push companies and people to do more than they think they are capable of.