A summary of a provocative doctoral research study on the factors influencing CEOs in deviating from long-term strategies for short-term objectives. The research was based on interviews with CEOs of publicly traded companies ranging from $10 million to $12 billion in annual revenue. This book includes an overview of challenges CEOs and their companies faced in the last 25 years, their decisions in dealing with those challenges, and the resulting successes or failures.
From the research study it was found that most CEOs regarded internal organizational issues as most detrimental to execution of long-term strategies. Conversely, CEOs considered Wall Street expectations, SEC regulations, stock downtrends, and/or liabilities as costly and time-consuming, but not detrimental to execution of long-term strategies.
Paradoxically, most CEOs still assigned first priority to shareholders over customers and employees by a large margin. This set of internal factors and priorities assigned to external factors is the conflicting dilemma that hindered CEOs’ effective execution of long-term strategies.
