I read somewhere that when Terry Semel was CEO of Yahoo! in the early 2000s, he had his emails printed out, wrote his responses longhand, and then had the secretary type them in.
He didn’t use the Internet.
Seriously.
Can you imagine Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg not using Facebook? Or the CEO of General Motors driving a Mercedes? Or the CEO of South West Airlines being afraid of flying?
Sure an overweight middle-aged white guy could probably do a great job as the CEO of a company that makes and sells beauty products for hip, young Latina women — But it sure is tough to have a high degree of credibility within your company, if you are that personally disconnected from what your company stands for, and what it does.