Culture is both a tool and side-effect of leadership. I talk about culture being the sum of all the actions of all the participants, but the funny thing is that culture also informs all those actions. Basically, there's a self-reinforcing feedback loop here, and that's one of the reasons why changing negative cultural aspects is both hard and important. It's hard because you'll be working against the currently ingrained culture. And it's important because you must break that self-reinforcing loop in order to affect real change.

And yes, CEOs can make tactical decisions, or at the very least give final approval on them. I think in smaller companies they tend to be more involved in such decisions, and as the company grows it becomes impossible to keep up and it gets delegated out. But in my opinion, those tactical decisions like the ones you list don't exhibit leadership as much as they need a leader to make them. It's a reversal of the reasoning: People aren't leaders because they make those decisions; they make those decisions because they're leaders.