ÜBERCEO

Last week in an article titled “Meet the Top Three Women CEOs” we mentioned a study by Harvard Business Review that found that women CEOs still have one major obstacle to overcome as leaders: their superiors, peers and subordinates believe that women, compared to men, lack vision.

Anne Dumas, the CEO of a leading services company, whose name was changed by HBR, disagrees.   When asked what, in her opinion, makes her an effective leader and CEO, she said it was attention to detail:

“I think strategy comes naturally from knowing your business and the forces that influence your market, clients, and suppliers—not at a high level but at a detailed level. Intermediaries kill your insight. You obviously can’t monitor everything, but nothing should keep you from knowing in detail the processes on which your company runs—not supervising everything but understanding at a detailed level what is going on. Otherwise, you are hostage to people who will play politics. At best you don’t have full information; at worst you’re vulnerable to hidden agendas. My job is to go to the relevant detail level.”

What do you think? What makes a CEO an ÜberCEO? Is it attention to detail, focus, strong command of the technical elements of their jobs or is it vision? Or is it something else altogether?