Chief executives project an air of certainty but their real state of mind must be constant doubt.
How do I know? First, very few of us go through a day without feeling bursts of anxiety about what we have done, are doing or will do. Second, it is the overriding message emerging from anonymous interviews with 152 chief executives for a study by Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Heidrick & Struggles, the headhunter. Third, accepting that many situations have no definitive solution — one of the characteristics of a paradox — could, paradoxically, be the surest way to handle them.
The CEO study, out on Wednesday, is cunningly timed for this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos. The forum is thought of as the acme of corporate self-confidence. It is in fact designed to exacerbate executive angst. Every participant is afflicted by Stardust Memories Syndrome. In the opening scene of the Woody Allen film, the director sits in a train with a bunch of depressed or dubious-looking passengers. A clock ticks menacingly in the background. Allen glances across the tracks to see another carriage in which beautiful and important people are whooping it up. He pleads with the guard but cannot change trains. Davos in a nutshell.