The Evolution and Future of the Celebrity CEO

I had an epiphany – though you can decide whether I was beguiled by a mirage – while reading a recent Wall Street Journal article that explored China’s penchant for CEOs to double as entertainers. 

According to the article, the rise of the entertaining CEO derives from the hierarchical and regimented approach to corporate culture in China. Consequently, company parties, at which the CEO does a star turn, provide an opportunity for corporate leaders to establish rapport, express a relatable persona, and show gratitude to the rank and file. 

Some of the CEO performances are elaborate, some not so much. 

When Elon Musk took the stage at a Tesla company gathering in China, he perfunctorily gyrated and shuffled for a few uncomfortable seconds before bringing his brief show to merciful halt. If you must, you can view his awkward dance steps by following the link to the Wall Street Journal article. I’ve given you fair warning, though. Further warning is offered in the reviews of Tesla employees who witnessed the performance:

“He only did a few impromptu shakes to the beat. I wouldn’t call it a legit dance,” says Emma Liu, then a marketing manager at Tesla. Musk’s moves reminded her of former president Donald Trump, who would pump his arms back and forth to the Village People’s “YMCA” during campaign rallies.

“He danced like a teenager who went clubbing for the first time,” a Tesla manager recalls of Musk’s techniques. “It was still fun to watch your boss dance. I’m a fan.”

Similarly, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, while attending a recent NVIDIA Lunar New Year party, was coaxed into performing a folk dance popular in northern China. Reviews were mixed, but the consensus gave him an ‘A” for effort. 

Forget the Slides, Where's the Setlist?

At the baroque end of the spectrum, Alibaba Group co-founder Jack Ma, in gear that made him look like a member of Judas Priest, performed a rock ballad for 60,000 employees to celebrate his retirement and Alibaba’s 20^th anniversary in 2019.  If you’re having trouble conjuring that surreal image, or you doubt my veracity, I’ve included the video below.  

Similarly, Baidu chairman Robin Li went full rocker when he got behind a drumkit to perform at a company party. At another company event, Li strummed an acoustic guitar. 

The WSJ article concludes as follows, prompting several questions from this inquiring, if reeling, mind:

One of the biggest misconceptions first-time visitors to China have about the country is that one cannot have fun there, says business consultant Pereira.

“Dancing and singing may not be common among Western CEOs now,” he says. “But perhaps that’s actually something they can learn from their Chinese counterparts.”

 Hmm. Let's dig a bit deeper into this quarry, shall we?

What if the “dancing and singing CEO” propagates beyond China? What if it already has begun to spread, though in a slightly different permutation, in the Western world? Might the cult of the performative CEO become a worldwide phenomenon? If so, how might the role evolve in an era typified by celebrity culture, wall-to-wall brand influencers, superhero movies, ubiquitous digitization, increasingly sophisticated algorithms, and AI? These questions might seem frivolous and whimsical, but perhaps the answers to them will have profound consequences for corporations and other large organizations worldwide.

Many CEOs in the Western world already rate as celebrities. Think of the aforementioned Elon Musk, notwithstanding his wonky dance moves, widely known as the foremost celebrity provocateur on Twitter (now X, unfortunately), which he owns. Think, too, of Richard Branson, who was and remains the standard bearer for the Virgin brand since well before the onset of digital transformation. 

In the technology demimonde, news coverage of Apple in the first decade of this millennium focused reverently on Steve Jobs, to the exclusion of nearly everybody else that served in an executive capacity or worked at Apple. Larry Ellison has long been the ageless, swashbuckling sailor at the helm of Oracle. Now, we have Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, a relatively new kid on the block, fawningly lionized by the business press as a tech-geek “Fonzie”, wearing his trademark, hipster leather jacket. 

The celebrity CEO predates and extends well beyond the technology industry. The business press has long fixated on the CEO as the principal focus of feature articles on the success or failure of large companies, going all the way back (perhaps well before) Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst Sr. 

Business publications and newsmagazines (remember them?), on the frequent occasions when they reported on General Electric (GE), would heavily emphasize the slash-and-burn financialization and machinations of its once-celebrated CEO, (Neutron) Jack Welch. Countless books were written about Welch's "business genius," though it all ended in tears for GE and Welch when the global financial crisis exposed the company's corporate structure as little more than a tenuous house of cards.

Those narrow narrative preferences of the media are gross simplifications. No single person accounts entirely for a company’s success, though one could argue that an unchecked leader can bring a company to permanent grief. 

In fact, sustainable organizational success is contingent on the commitment, creativity, dedication, effort, ingenuity, perseverance, resourcefulness, and teamwork of a vast constellation of executives, managers, technical specialists, and other employees. But it’s difficult for journalists to devise compelling narratives around inherently complex milieu, so they concentrate instead on the person ensconced at the top of the corporate pyramid. It’s a simpler tale to tell, and the personal story makes it more engaging and familiar to a modern audience that prefers fictionalized blockbuster movies over conscientious, stolid documentaries. 

I might not agree with the hero worship and mythologizing that ensue, but I understand it. What’s more, I know there’s no point tilting at windmills. The business press (or what’s left of it) will continue to focus its narrative attention overwhelmingly on the man or woman at the top of corporate hierarchy. It’s a ritualistic norm at this point, deeply entrenched, and our contemporary celebrity culture suggests it’s here to stay – perhaps likely to develop further. 

Public Entertainment: Not Everybody Can Do It

The only catch is that performing – whether as a singer, musician, or dancer – doesn’t come naturally to most CEOs. That’s for an obvious reason: They aren’t entertainers. To perform before their employees or customers, conventional CEOs must develop their entertainment chops through preparation and rehearsal, which takes time and effort away from their usual duties. Even with ample practice, they might find that their best effort and finished product doesn’t meet audience expectations. 

With that prologue wrestled temporarily into submission, allow me to suggest that maybe there’s another way to arrive at the next generation of CEOs as celebrity standard bearers. 

In fact, it’s entirely possible that future CEOs will be more like celebrity brand ambassadors and less like technocratic business leaders. In that respect, Elon Musk is arguably ahead of the curve, spending more time in his fiefdom of social media than in the boardrooms of the companies he nominally runs. 

A capable cadre of C-level executives (COOs, presidents, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs), as well as vice presidents, could do much of the actual day-to-day, behind-the-scenes work – some might say that’s already true at many companies – and the CEO could be engaged full time as the charming or charismatic face of the company, regaling employees, other stakeholders, and the public with song, dance, comedy, and other forms rollicking entertainment. 

Let’s take this idea further afield and suggest that future CEOs might come from the ranks of the celebrity glitterati, just as politicians have increasingly come from Hollywood and other entertainment environs. We can cite the political success of former actors Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and realty-television host Donald Trump. (Yes, Trump was the scion of a real-estate businessman and made a controversial name for himself in business well before he become a mainstay on television, but there’s no question that his television career played an integral role in spreading his notoriety to a wider audience.) 

I realize that many readers are probably thinking it’s preposterous to presume that an actor, singer, or comedian could somehow run a technology company, but allow me to retort that the same was once said about the improbability of entertainers converting their popularity to electoral politics. Even Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a comedian and actor before he made a dramatic and successful transition into politics. 

Give some thought, too, to the role of “influencers” in the digital consumer economy. The most successful of influencers are deemed by major companies to have a significant impact on the appeal, popularity, and revenue associated with various products and services. As AI evolves and social media further displaces traditional news media, the value of anything that enhances brand appeal can only grow? Algorithms and celebrity seem strangely entwined. 

Laugh, if you must, at the prospect of the perpetually entertaining celebrity CEO – singing, dancing, or instrument-playing – whose cache and value as a famous personality surpasses any traditional management acumen he or she might possess. (Such timeless business acumen, as I noted earlier, will still reside within organizations, but the individuals who possess will not feature as corporate headliners on stages and screens.) 

Perhaps the one mistake Musk has made in this regard involves his gratuitous leap into the trenches of the polarized (and polarizing) culture wars. Celebrity CEOs of the future will try to steer clear of anything that smacks of partisan politics, all the better to avoid alienating prospective customers, investors, and other stakeholders.