Comment by ebiester
13 days ago
It is, but at some point, so is management. So is any human capital past your key positions.
I feel like managers - even good managers - understand that better than most. That isn't to say there isn't variation in humans - choosing the humans right for your team and organization will help advance a lot, but it really helps us to think of organizations as ant colonies. One person can slow it down, but very few can speed it up, and they can only do so much.
It's the network of communication that matters more than the person.
Most labor is a commodity in this system “past your key positions” (overpaid execs).
I often struggle to understand what executives do all day. I work (and have worked in many different orgs) with executives quite a bit, see insight into their process, and often come away underwhelmed instead of more confident in leadership.
There are exceptions - I can think of a couple CTOs I know that are worth their weight in gold - but they are just that - exceptions.
I will say, the smaller the organization, the more having the right executives is important though, but it seems that only lasts while headcount is sub ~200 people or so and executives maintain an active role with all pillars of the organization relevant to their function (e.g., it isn't weird for an IC to talk to the CTO from time to time about how their job is going)