No. CEOs make important decisions about how a company is run and its future. Some companies might share responsibilities differently.
I've yet to work in a (large) company where the CEO is actually relevant. Most of the decisions happen at lower, departmental levels.
In the initial years, CEOs can make or break a company, but after that it's pretty random. You can have a brilliant CEO that just gets stumped and the company goes bust. Or you can have an incompetent CEO that just stumbles from success to success.
In my experience, CEOs get hired because of their old-boys networks that will allow the company to participate to the pay-to-play games with e.g. financial institutes or similar industry handshake-wink-wink-partnerships. They know people that know people, that's it.
At the companies I've worked at, lower levels never make far-reaching decisions for the company.
That's what incompetent CEOs usually do; they get in the way of competent people doing a heck of a job.
Good CEOs know that they are figureheads and try to stay out of the crucial decision making, handing off responsibilities to people that actually know what they are doing.
Hasn't been the case for me. Even if they didn't come up with, say, a market strategy, they're important in executing it. They lead rather than getting the hell out of the way.
>Good CEOs know that they are figureheads and try to stay out of the crucial decision making, handing off responsibilities to people that actually know what they are doing.
A good CEO makes critical decisions. Handing off responsibilities if they know their limits is indeed part of being a good CEO.