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Pope Francis, who died on MondayOnce compared, the reform of Rome with the cleaning of the Egypt sphinx with a toothbrush. For someone possessed with papal infallibility, it is a frank admission that the power of supposedly supported leaders has limits. It is something that the leaders of the big corporations sometimes fight to understand.
It is true that being head of the Catholic Church is not the role it once was. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III was considered the most important person in Europe. Even so, even Francis enjoyed an anxious audience of approximately 1.4 billion people, rather than the constituencies of the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, for example.
However, despite everything, Pope Francis could only push his influence so far. It was, in many ways, a reformer, cleaning the finances of the Vatican and softening some of the most conservative positions of the Church in the genre. But his ability to change his organization, and the world in general, found limits. Despite all their calls to a more compassionate financial sector, American companies are now, after Donald Trump’s re -election as president, hurrying to Crying premedia Close the wealth gap and correct social errors.
The company’s leaders have a more practical power than Francis’s successor will inherit and recognize few limitations. Alphabet Pichai, or Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms, can count on followers that are a multiple of the Catholic Church. Facebook applications claim users of 3 billion. Google’s search engine could reach double again.
And in a sign of their influence on joints and shareholders, corporate leaders have never been better paid. Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan and David Solomon from Goldman Sachs received $ 39mn for their work last year. The Blackstone Chief Steve Schwarzman received $ 1 billion. The global donations of the faithful to support Francis’s works, known as Peter’s Pence, raised around $ 55mn in 2023. That is more than what most of Wall Street chiefs receive, but the gap is closing.
Despite all their power, business leaders are still more looking for. Zuckerberg typifies those who have super votes that confer an infallibility version. Dimon and Salomon, like almost half of the leaders of the S&P 500 companies, combine roles of CEO and chair, and their employers resist the separation of those powers.
Even so, there are two vital things that the potatoes understand, and perhaps better than corporate pontiffs. First, that its power depends on others: in the case of Francisco, the one billion followers of the Catholic faith. Second, that the institution must survive the individual. That seems obvious to a 2,000 -year -old church. For high -flying companies, many from their first century, it is a lesson that is worth remembering.