I’m not being sarcastic, but isn’t that the exact mandate of a CEO?

Stable long term growth is valuable. An excessively greedy CEO that gets himself ousted creates uncertainty, which is less ideal.

The job of the CEO is to manage the company as well as they can, keeping business good today and ensuring the company has a tomorrow. It is not hard to intuit that this involves both short and long term thinking.

The whole "it's to maximise shareholder value" refrain is not actually a thing, AFAIK, despite it being something people like to keep repeating.

Legal mandate nonetheless