Bill Canady says the hero CEO who works extreme hours and makes all key decisions becomes a bottleneck. The business can only grow as fast as the leader's calendar allows. It's not leadership, it's a titled bottleneck.
You cannot delegate authority to an empty chair. And there's a story in our business that makes this worse. So let's take it apart. The hero CEO, the one who walks into a broken company, works 100 hours a week, personally decides everything that matters, and drags the thing to a premium exit on will alone. I've met that person. Heck, I've been that person before early in my career, and I was a version of that person, and I was proud of it. Which is kind of the embarrassing part, to be honest. Here's what nobody put in that story. The hero CEO had a hard ceiling, and the ceiling is his own calendar. A business that runs on one person's judgment can only ever be as big, as fast, and as good as that person's week. That's not leadership. That's a bottleneck with a title on the door.
