Product is the key

What's the most important criteria to be a CEO?
The answer given by Paul Otellini is "be a product person". His argument is that a good CEO has to be very familiar with the products from every perspective because product is the key to the company's success.

Talking about leadership, we always think about various factors, such as personality and communications skills. But the most important factor is the company's success. It's not rare to see some jerk CEO whose company is making a good profit.

Yesterday's big news Edward Zander, the CEO of Motorola, was forced to quit because of the company's worst-than-expected performance. Zander had been with Motorola for four years, while he saw the successful sale of smash-hit Razr cell phone. Now with the decreasing sale of Razr and no successors, the firm has been facing pressure from Wall Street investors.

So being a good leader may not be hard. Trying to be a good sales person first.