The second CEO nobody sees
The 2026 CEO Reality Report
There are two CEOs inside every founder.
The first one runs the company.
Sets direction, makes the calls, carries the plan. That CEO gets all the attention, including their own.
The second CEO is quieter.
It is the person who carries the worry home, who lies awake with the decision nobody else can make, who feels alone at the top of an organisation full of people.
For twenty-five years of running my own companies, I knew that second CEO very well.
Here is what I have learned, both from my own years in the chair and from the founders I work with now. We spend enormous effort diagnosing the business. We almost never diagnose ourselves. And the second CEO, the one we ignore, is very often the one quietly running out of road.
So this week I would like to offer you a simple mirror.
The CEO Reality Study takes about eight minutes and it is completely anonymous. It looks at both sides at once: what is hard in the business, and what is hard for you.
Not so you can compare yourself to anyone else, but so you can see your own situation clearly and honestly.
Take the CEO Reality Study here: ceoreality.nedoma.io