This insight is helpful during a search for a new CEO, but it’s hardly one that sitting CEOs can use to improve their performance. Academic research also demonstrates that traits such as drive, resilience, and risk tolerance make CEOs more successful. For example, recent studies that detail how CEOs spend their time don’t show the difference between a good use of time and a bad one. Nor has academic and other research on the CEO’s role done much to illuminate how CEOs think and what they do to excel. To show which mindsets and practices are proven to make CEOs most effective, we studied performance data on thousands of CEOs and revisited our firsthand experience helping CEOs enhance their leadership approaches. In their experience, even asking other CEOs how to approach the job doesn’t help, because suggestions vary greatly once they go beyond high-level advice such as “set the strategy,” “shape the culture,” and “get the right team.” Perhaps that’s not surprising-industry contexts differ, as do leadership preferences-but it illustrates that fellow CEOs don’t necessarily make reliable guides. Many of the CEOs we’ve worked with have expressed similar views. McKinsey’s longtime leader, Marvin Bower, considered the CEO’s job so specialized that he felt executives could prepare for the post only by holding it. The high standards and broad expectations of directors, shareholders, customers, and employees create an environment of relentless scrutiny in which one move can dramatically make or derail an accomplished career.įor all the scrutiny of the CEO’s role, though, little is solidly understood about what CEOs really do to excel. 2 Eben Harrell, “Succession planning: What the research says,” Harvard Business Review, December 2016, pp. Just three in five newly appointed CEOs live up to performance expectations in their first 18 months on the job. Despite the luster of the role, serving as a CEO can be all-consuming, lonely, and stressful. 1 Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018. What the CEO controls-the company’s biggest moves-accounts for 45 percent of a company’s performance. It’s the most powerful and sought-after title in business, more exciting, rewarding, and influential than any other. A company has only one peerless role: chief executive officer.
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