I think it's a careful balance. You need the ability to take decisive action, but at the same time the decisive action might just kill the company. I think the solution is supposed to be that you have multiple companies and when one dies off due to stupid missteps another is there to take its place. Unfortunately it appears that companies keep consolidating and gobbling each other up, which I don't think is healthy for society.

Sometimes the best action for a company to take is the one that doesn't maximize short term profit. That's where a CEO can shine. Markets are like genetic algorithms, they are prone to getting hung up on local maxima.