This region—our region—is a peculiar formation.
Its form is stunning: mountainous and sunlit, rough and radiant, with valleys that open like palms and coastlines that catch the light. The people who give it substance—stubborn, sarcastic, persistent, inventive—carry a spark that can ignite worlds. In every person here lives a stubborn passion; in every encounter, the weight of history, a mosaic of cultures, and that faint patina of hardship etched by personal and collective fate. Formally, we are beautiful. Essentially, we are extraordinary.
And yet, if we were a company, we would be a threadbare public enterprise: drifting on the waves of tomorrow, still riveted to yesterday. Every department works for itself. We spend more than we have, produce more than we use (mostly for others), elevate unfit managers, and drag ourselves through the workday like a scene from a long-running office sitcom. Our motto might as well be: better to sit for nothing than do something for nothing. With all our beauty and brilliance, as a company we would be loss-making.
Maybe circumstance nudged us toward bankruptcy. Maybe we missed every market signal to consolidate, professionalize the management, and adopt the technologies that were already remaking our competitors. Faced with the mess, our best “employees” slip away—to better-run companies, cleaner systems, clearer horizons—because they’ve come to believe that elsewhere is the only place where better happens.
So: what kind of leader would this company—this region—need for good people to do and feel better here?
SOMEONE WHO SEES DIFFERENCE AS A RESOURCE, NOT A DEFECT
We need a leader broad enough to embrace our differences and grounded enough to braid our similarities into a shared objective. Someone who respects the people they lead yet has the courage To take them where it’s good for them—not where a passing outsider would prefer us to go.
The true shareholders of this company are its citizens. Their mandate is not ideological; it is plain: durable prosperity in peace and synergy. Our CEO must understand that variety is not a bug in the design but the source code of our strength. Don’t standardize our uniforms; synchronize our steps. See power in the polyphony of languages, methods, and memories—and know that the best ideas are born where perspectives cross, not in monoliths that echo only themselves.
SOMEONE WHO TAKES RESPONSIBILITY INSTEAD OF OUTSOURCING BLAME
This is the pivot on which all real change turns. For too long our leaders have rehearsed the same choreography: point outward, absolve inward. Competitors, markets, geopolitics, conspiracies, citizens—everyone becomes the culprit while the leader remains the innocent victim of unfortunate weather.
We need someone who starts at the mirror. What can I change? How can I be better? Which part of my approach makes this problem possible? Leadership is not a scavenger hunt for culprits; it is ownership of the solution. It says, “This is the state of things. I am responsible for change. Here’s how we will do it—together.”
SOMEONE WHO IS NOT FOR SALE —AND WHO WILL NOT SELL US SHORT
This CEO cannot be purchasable or pliant. They should not scan our assets for liquidation value, but for their capacity to serve generations to come. We have had our fill of executives who chase private bonuses while the enterprise quietly collapses.
We need a steward who measures success not by quarterly optics or applause lines but by whether people stay, grow, and believe their future lives here. By how many apprentices become masters; how many teams become institutions; how many families stop counting the exits and start counting the years.
SOMEONE WHO BUILDS A CULTURE OF GROWTH INSTEAD OF A CULTURE OF LEAVING
Our company bleeds talent. The best depart—not only engineers and managers, but drivers, nurses, carpenters, teachers. They don’t just leave for higher salaries; they leave in search of regard—of being seen, valued, and allowed to get better at the thing they love to do. People don’t only quit companies; they quit the feeling that effort is futile. They quit when management denies the obvious and rewards the loyal over the capable. They quit when order is optional and fairness a rumor.
A good CEO would rebuild meaning: turn stubbornness into perseverance with a purpose; give creativity room; give passion a direction. Replace the reflex to book the first flight out with the instinct to plant something that will outlast us. Let people experience progress they can measure—not just promises they can memorize.
SOMEONE GUIDED BY A LONG HORIZON, NOT THE NEXT REPORT
Companies and countries don’t transform overnight. We need a CEO who looks past the next quarter and the next mandate; who asks not “What can we extract?” but “What can we build within this?” Strategy over spectacle. Sequencing over shortcuts.
Leadership means taking people where it is good for them—even when the road is not yet paved and the map is not fully drawn. It means holding course when fashions shift and critics chorus. It means saying no to shortcuts that mortgage the future; yes to work whose rewards accrue gradually, then suddenly, the way all compounding does.
SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES IN US —EVEN WHEN WE DOUBT OURSELVES
We need a leader who sees in us the potential we have half-forgotten: not a “developing market” forever in rehearsal, but a community of skilled, spirited people trapped in systems that do not let them breathe. Someone who will show us who we are without flattery and without contempt—hold up a clear mirror and say: “We can work with this. Let’s begin. Together.”
Because belief, too, compounds. One fair process breeds another. One repaired institution repairs trust around it. One team that stays becomes five that flourish. This is how companies—and regions—heal: not through a single heroic act, but through the ordinary heroism of many hands, over time.
Does such a CEO exist? Perhaps not as a single person. Perhaps as a shared conscience—a decision each of us makes to stop transferring blame and start accepting responsibility. To stop waiting for rescuers and begin acting like owners. To argue less about who gets the credit and do more of the work that earns it. To insist on standards. To protect what is ours without selling what makes it worth having.
Maybe that CEO is already here, scattered across factories and classrooms, studios and city halls—waiting only for us to recognize our fraction of duty in this vast, beautiful, complicated company called The Region. Maybe it’s time to stop watching our best people leave and start building the reasons we will all want to stay.
Where we become better, life here becomes better.
And the CEO we end up with will always be exactly as serious, as honest, and as brave as the collective that chooses—and becomes—the leadership it needs.