From the DF Archive: Should a CEO Be a Nerd About Their Company’s Products?

Back in 2022, I quoted from an interesting post by Ben Schlappig at One Mile at a Time, where he wrote:

I’ve had the opportunity to interact with quite a few senior airline executives over the years, and I find that their knowledge about competitors is typically one extreme or the other:

  • Some airline executives literally couldn’t tell you the first thing about their competitors, and have no knowledge of their passenger experience, fleet, etc.
  • Some airline executives know literally everything about their competitors, down to being able to tell you how many seats competitors have on specific planes

I find there are very few executives who are just kind of in the middle, as it’s pretty polarizing. Either they know virtually everything about competitors, or nearly nothing. Without naming any names, I’ll say that generally speaking there’s a high correlation between airlines that have a great passenger experience, and airlines that have executives that keep very close tabs on the competition.

And I wrote:

If the CEO’s primary perspective on the company is via spreadsheets — if it’s all just P&L to them — that company is not going to excel at quality. Or if they do excel at quality, they won’t for long.

I think Tim Cook was truly an exception in the regard. He’s not a product guy, and never pretended to be. He is a spreadsheet guy. But he clearly realized that about himself, and he understood that Apple’s entire point is delivering great products and experiences. But I think Ternus is a breath of fresh air in this regard. Apple didn’t immediately switch to decision-making by quantifiable numbers under Cook, but incrementally, year-by-year, decision-making by quantifiable numbers took over.

You simply cannot assign numeric values to everything, and some of those things that cannot be quantified are the most important things. Apple needs a CEO who makes some major product decisions by gut alone.

★ Monday, 19 October 2026