Then blame the board imo. They define the objectives for the CEO, the incentives for achieving them, and the governance framework for governing their execution. If shareholders want this “short term thinking” that always gets brought up, then they have every right to it.

Of course this “short term thinking” trope is just a meme that the armchair commentators like to pedal out. If the system was dysfunctional enough to prioritise short term profit seeking to this extent, then all a competitor would have to do to monopolise any market is do enough “long term thinking” to outlast all their failing competitors. Investors would notice this and reallocate their capital accordingly.

But none of this is what happens in reality. If anything I would say the market is over-interested in long term strategies. The popularity of the growth over profit model that we observe amongst most prolific capital allocators takes “long term thinking” to absurd lengths.