The role of a company CEO is like no other. Deep knowledge of an individual’s specialisation or division must give way to a broad knowledge of the entire business, industry and external environment.

As former Westpac boss David Morgan noted: “The CEO role is unique. Before I was appointed CEO, I’d run the retail bank, I’d run the wealth management, I’d run the corporate bank. And now I was just running the whole company, right? Wrong. You have a whole lot of new constituents to manage that you don’t at that operational level. You’ve got to step back from taking all the individual decisions that got you there.”