Aflac’s Dan Amos Reveals How He’s Successfully Held Onto the CEO’s Job for 35 Years

Dan Amos will be the first to tell you that he never expected to become CEO when he joined Aflac as a sales rep in 1973. He was happy in sales, and good at it. When the supplemental-insurance giant offered him the presidency in 1983, taking that post actually meant a financial step down.

“I took a big cut in income, because I did so well [in sales],” Amos told ADWEEK on a recent video call from his office in Columbus, GA. “I wrote $600,000 [in policies] my first year and, in my 10th year, I wrote $11 million.”

But Amos accepted the promotion, which put him on a path that saw him appointed CEO in 1990.

Amos counts many achievements in the job (including championing the famous talking Duck) but the most surprising one might be how long he’s held onto it.

With 35 years on his punchcard, Amos is today among the longest-serving CEOs in America. (Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet has him beat by just five years).

Once upon a time, long-term occupants of the corner office were easier to find. Sam Walton served as Walmart’s CEO from 1962 until 1988—26 years. Leslie Wexner, who became CEO of The Limited in 1963, had served 57 years by the time he retired in 2020.

But resilient chief executives are becoming an endangered species. The average tenure of a CEO in the S&P 500 (of which Aflac is a part) is down to 8.9 years, according to corporate leadership consultancy Spencer Stuart. In November 2024, executive search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 1,824 CEOs who’d announced they were leaving their posts, the highest tally since the HR services firm began watching CEO comings and goings in 2002.

Amos obviously likes his job, and the $20.7 million he took home in 2023 (according to page 61 of Aflac’s 2024 proxy statement) is doubtless an incentive, too.

But even money hasn’t been enough to stem the tide of executives leaving a post that’s more complex and demanding than ever. Amos’ tenure, he said, stems from the ability to meet those demands. He spoke of three in particular.

Wall Street is watching

Foremost is the expectation of swift results.

“Because of the amount of money that CEOs are paid, they’re expected to perform much quicker,” Amos said. “In some ways, it’s like a [star] football or basketball coach—they get paid high amounts of money, but they’re expected to perform quicker than they can actually do.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, one of the factors that drive generous CEO compensation is the perception that there’s a limited pool of qualified candidates out there. But with the high pay comes commensurately high expectations. Today, performance targets account for 60-80% of CEO compensation. And with shareholders demanding better results every quarter (and Wall Street analysts punishing companies that fail to deliver) CEOs face incessant pressure to move the needle quickly.

One business plan, two philosophies

According to 2020 research by management consultancy Insigniam, actions taken by CEOs of the 1950s accounted for 10% of the company’s overall performance. By the 2000s, that percentage had doubled. Simply put, today’s CEOs find themselves in far greater positions of power, responsibility, and accountability.

In Amos’ view, that dynamic includes the skill to meet the aforementioned short-term demands while also planning for the long-term health of the company. It’s a high-wire act.

One factor in Amos’ favor is that 60-70% of Aflac’s revenue comes from Japan, where supplemental health insurance is very popular. Japanese business culture tends to be more long-term than short-term oriented, Amos said, which is to his benefit.

Nevertheless, “there is a balance there, and the job of the CEO is to make sure you have both.”

The 24/7 CEO

Another force that Amos and his c-suite brethren have had to contend with is the morphing of CEOs into public figures. Not only have some CEOs become the equivalent to celebrities (think Martha Stewart, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk), many chief executives have surrendered their private lives in the process.

“It’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Amos said. “If you’re not careful, you can burn out. I mean, you are never off.”

Amos remembers Alfac’s medical director once joshing him that the big difference between a physician’s job and a CEO’s is that the doctor at least gets to silence his pager every so often.

Amos has resigned himself to being available all the time, even when he’s ostensibly on vacation. He has a cell phone, he said, that can take a call atop Mount Everest if necessary.