[Don Plumley]

I ran a reporting division of a public company. Budgeting was a serious process with simple realities: Deliver, and all is good. Don't deliver, then you have an opportunity to recover. There were few second chances. Fortunately, my division delivered.

While there certainly are poorly run/poorly managed firms out there, trying to lump all companies under this veneer of "this is how public companies are run" is like trying to judge Porsche based on the 924.

To Sammy's point that "CEO's are just salesmen"; well, not in the pejorative sense, but you are right. The real difficulty is translating the goals and vision into operational plans and then insuring that they are done. Read up on Larry Bossidy to see what kind of mind-numbing detail a "real CEO" has to be on top of to get the job done. It looks very glamorous from far away, but up close, it's very hard work.