CEO spin vs internal culture

[LongHaul]

I was talking to a friend who works for a large company and he said that when the CEO's spin is annoying on the outside it is far worse on the inside because people know the CEO is full of baloney. 

 

I was curious what other people's perspectives were.  Does external spin to shareholders translate into internal spin to employees, etc?  and is the opposite true.

Is a CEO who is a straight shooter with shareholders straight internally?

 

 

[Jurgis]

I think that evaluating CEO from inside might be as hard as evaluating them from outside.

 

Most people on the inside have no clue about company's position/moat/competitiveness/competition/financials/etc.

 

Even people who know and understand these things, don't necessarily have an ability to tie these metrics to what's happening inside. E.g. is it good if X people are cut in division Y? Is it good if project Z is promoted and project W is closed?

 

To be honest though, I have never been a good evaluator of CEOs. I never worked for great CEOs. The ones I worked for usually looked good when company was doing well, but looked like crap when company was performing poorly. In some cases, the situation changed and the CEO could not change. In some cases, they just continued the trajectory when changes were needed.

 

Also, in large organizations sometimes it's hard to see CEO vs. division politics. CEO might talk about X, but changes below their level are quite different and you just don't know if CEO is spinning or if they don't know what they division VPs are doing or if there's politics/infighting/etc.