I have been reading through "Ben's Blog," which is written by Ben Horowitz of Andreesen Horowitiz (a firm that just raised 650 million, yikes!) He wrote a great post awhile back on how the firm evaluates CEOs. Read the whole thing, it is inspired. I especially love this part, because it is so true and explodes the myth of the all knowing and all powerful CEO:
Courage is particularly important, because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. In fact, at the time of the decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10% of the information typically present in the ensuing Harvard Business School case study (emphasis added by me). As a result, the CEO must have the courage to bet the company on a direction even though she does not know if the direction is right. The most difficult decisions (and often the most important) are difficult precisely because they will be deeply unpopular with the CEO’s most important constituencies (employees, investors, and customers).
This point dovetails well with the quote at the top of Ben's Blog:
I will poke around more; he is a very thoughtful guy. Also, Ben's point reminds of something I heard Andy Grove say several years back along similar lines — see this HBR post on how a good boss is confident, but not really sure.