The visible decisions that I've seen attributed to CEOs range from "absurdly and obviously bad" to "good, until you find out the same decisions are already echoing throughout the industry". It begs the question did they come up with it themselves? Or did they just happen to hear rumblings before the grunts did?

I would argue that an above average CEO has a negligible effect on the company and an average one actively damages the company. The good ones make the decisions that everyone copies shortly after. We could probably replace >90% of them with AI and be better off.