"Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has a question he likes to ask founders about their companies: "Why do you deserve to exist?" It's a provocation that's not about market share, pitch decks, or investor appetite, but rather necessity. "The best generic answer I've ever received was, 'if I don't do it, no one else will,'" he recently told the tech news podcast TBPN."
"Leaders are often evaluated on their ability to scale an organization, manage complexity, inspire employees, and reassure investors. Those are critical competencies. But they don't touch the deeper inquiry: If you didn't lead, would anything meaningful be lost? As Leslie Motter, CEO of Make-A-Wish, told me recently, becoming a chief executive isn't a right or the inevitable next rung on the corporate ladder-it's a responsibility. And increasingly, it demands moral clarity, resilience, and a sense of obligation that goes beyond ambition."
"Chesky's question reframes the CEO role the way founders often understand it: not as something you want to achieve, but something you feel compelled to shoulder. It calls to mind a conversation I had earlier this year with Nike's Elliott Hill, who told me he pursued the CEO role because he genuinely believed he was the one who could return the company to heightened growth."
Central leadership question: 'Why do you deserve to exist?' frames company purpose as necessity rather than market metrics. A strong answer is that if the founder does not act, no one else will. Traditional CEO evaluation focuses on scaling, managing complexity, inspiring teams, and reassuring investors, but these competencies do not prove that the leader's absence would cause meaningful loss. Chief executiveship is a responsibility demanding moral clarity, resilience, and obligation beyond ambition. Effective CEOs accept roles because they believe they uniquely can solve essential problems, ensuring the role conveys distinct value rather than mere performance.
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]