TL;DR: Unlike other types of leaders (eg. Presidents), good CEOs consistently set destinations, and align new people towards those destinations, but don't micromanage the means by which their team gets there. Except for some times, when they have to.

This was horribly written. Succinctness is a virtue.

The issue with supposedly well-written articles like this one is the fact that I need to go through literally 4 paragraphs repeating the same thing as a different metaphor. Just look at this:

>>> CEOs are orientation locks. The opposite of steering is orientation locking. To enforce Newton’s first law, the inertia one, on dancing human systems inclined to violate it. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t inertia that’s the problem for most companies, it is lack of sufficient inertia in the right direction. Enough to punch through any resistance that might be encountered. And the reason they lack the inertia is that CEOs aren’t steady enough in their jobs as orientation locks, providing a steady True North signal to everybody else doing more local kinds of steering work.

>>> The primary CEO function, and the trait the good ones are selected for, is to provide the gyroscopic stability required to keep a company vectored in the chosen direction. They end up in the jobs they do because they counterbalance an organization’s natural tendency towards distraction, ADD and momentum dissipation. A typical company is a wandering, wobbling hive mind, liable to spend all its time chasing distractions if you let it, before dissolving into a bunch of clever tweets about crappy prototypes.

>>> As the orientation lock, the CEO becomes the human locus where momentum compounds; the psychological platform others build on. They are the steward of whatever snowballing network effect or unleashed natural wealth-creating dynamic is the company’s raison d’être. Their primary job, and ideally their only one, is to protect and feed that dynamic, and get everything else out of the way.

>>> Every act of steering leaks or drains at least a small amount of momentum, no matter where in the company it happens. But steering at the CEO locus truly hemorrhages momentum, creating serious, possibly existential, vulnerabilities. Because by definition there are no systems for doing it well. If there’s a system, it would have kicked in before things got to CEO level. Worse, steering at CEO level might actually kill whatever compound-interest dynamic is driving the whole show, killing not just live momentum, but its source of renewal and growth.

Kind of funny that this was right next to this item[1] "Human sperm steer with second harmonics of the flagellar beat". Apparently one regresses in abilities over time... \s

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15666714

Doesn't ring true for me at all. If any C-suite role is about ensuring direction doesn't change, that's surely the COO.

Sooo, what is "steering" actually? Like, what?