The role of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is to serve as the highest-ranking executive in a company, with responsibility for making major corporate decisions, managing the overall operations and resources of a company, and acting as the main point of communication between the board of directors and corporate operations.
What Is “POSDCoRB”?
According to Gulick & Urwick in ‘Papers On The Science Of Administration’, the activities of the chief executive in an any organization can be summed as the acronym “POSDCoRB,” or: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Reporting, Budgeting. This acronym has since been expanded to refer to the activities and duties of administrative management in its entirety.
P – Planning
- Working out in broad outline the things that need to be done and the methods for doing them to accomplish the purpose set for the enterprise
- Developing and implementing high-level strategies
- Identifying and managing potential risks to the company
O – Organizing
- Establishing the formal structure of authority through which work subdivisions are arranged, defined, and coordinated for the defined objective
- Allocating resources efficiently to achieve company goals
S – Staffing
- Bringing in and training personnel
- Evaluating the performance of other executives
- Maintaining favorable conditions of work and a positive company culture
D – Directing
- Making decisions and embodying them in specific and general orders and instructions
- Serving as the leader of the enterprise – setting the vision and direction for the company
- Leading the executive team and providing to them guidance as needed
Co – Coordinating
- Interrelating the various part of the work
- Ensuring compliance with laws and regulations
- Acting as the face of the company in public and media relations
R – Reporting
- Keeping those to whom the executive is responsible informed as to what is going on, which thus includes keeping himself and his subordinates informed through records, research, and inspection
- Communicating effectively with stakeholders, including the board, employees, and shareholders
B – Budgeting
- Fiscal planning, accounting, and control
- Overseeing the company’s financial performance
- Overseeing major capital investments and expenditures
- Ensuring the company meets its financial goals

The point of the above is to “organize and institutionalize the executive function as such so that it may be more adequate in a complicated situation”, according to Gulick & Urwick, and we can use POSDCORB as the fundamental tasks of leaders in a corporate hierarchy – placing individuals in each specific role as the organization grows.
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