CEO Excellence

The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest

Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781982179694
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

New York Times Bestseller
Wall Street Journal Bestseller From the world's most influential management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, this is an insight-packed, revelatory look at how the best CEOs do their jobs based on extensive interviews with today's most successful corporate leaders—including chiefs at Netflix, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, and Sony. Being a CEO at any of the world's largest companies is among the most challenging roles in business. Billions, and even trillions, are at stake—and the fates of tens of thousands of employees often hang in the balance. Yet, even when "can't miss" high-achievers win the top job, very few excel. Thirty percent of Fortune 500 CEOs last fewer than three years, and two out of five new CEOs are perceived to be failing within eighteen months. For those who shoulder the burden of being the one on whom everyone counts, a manual for excellence is sorely needed. To identify the 21st century's best CEOs, the authors of CEO Excellence started with a pool of over 2400 public company CEOs. Extensive screening distilled that group into an elite corps, sixty-seven of whom agreed to in-depth, multi-hour interviews. Among those sharing their views: Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Kazuo Hirai (Sony), Ken Chenault (American Express), Mary Barra (GM), and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe (Nestlé). What came out of those frank, no-holds-barred conversations is a rich array of mindsets and actions that deliver outsized performance. Compelling, practical, and unprecedented in scope, CEO Excellence is a treasure trove of wisdom from today's most elite business leaders.

Appendix 1

CEO Excellence Assessment and Prioritization Tools

As leaders of McKinsey & Company’s CEO Excellence practice, we’re often called upon to help CEOs transition into the role, take stock of how they’re doing during their tenure, and determine when and how they should transition out of the role. In the course of that work, we’ve developed a series of tools to prompt reflection on CEO priorities and effectiveness. In this appendix we’ve included three exercises that CEOs tell us are extremely helpful.

The first involves looking at the CEO’s six main responsibilities and, with respect to each, assessing the degree of change that you aspire to lead. Typically, that call is based on the potential you see in each area, along with any guidance or guardrails that may be coming from the board or from external stakeholders. The second exercise prompts reflection regarding how you’re approaching the three sub-elements in all of the responsibility areas. The final exercise draws on the results of the first two, pinpointing high-leverage improvement areas and converting the insights into action.

Many CEOs find these exercises are most valuable when they’re not only self-assessing against them, but, also, prompting others to provide their views (e.g., team members and board members). Any themes that emerge or differences in perception can then be debriefed with your “kitchen cabinet” (as discussed in chapter 18) to identify actions that will lead to even more success.

Worksheet 3 – Prioritizing improvement areas and related actions

Reflect on your answers to worksheets 1 & 2 in answering the questions below

In any of the six responsibility areas where the magnitude of change you are driving is high (from worksheet 1), are there any practice areas you should be aspiring for excellence in that you aren’t already (from worksheet 2)?

Are there any of the 18 practice areas that you are “challenged” in that you should improve (from worksheet 2)?

In those responsibility areas where the magnitude of change you are driving is low (from worksheet 1), are there any practice areas you are potentially overdoing (where “able” on worksheet 2 is enough)?

What does your mind and your gut tell you are the top three areas in which you can/should improve to have even more impact as the CEO?

What are your concrete next steps to validate these takeaways, set improvement actions in motion, and hold yourself accountable for progress?

Appendix 2

CEO Biographies

In writing this book we’ve gone deep into what makes a CEO excellent. In the end, we’ve emerged with a far greater appreciation for the role and a genuine respect and admiration for those who do it well. We’re extremely grateful to the many exceptional leaders who acted as our tour guides along the way—all of whom have stories so full of human drama, high-stakes decision-making, battles won and lost, lessons learned, and wisdom gained that an entire book could be dedicated to each (for some that’s already the case!). A brief biography for each participant is located below. Please note that for those who have been CEOs of multiple companies, we highlight their time as CEO of the company that put them on our target list, as outlined in the methodology described in our introductory chapter. Also note that revenue and employees for their respective companies are as of fiscal year 2019—and market capitalization as of 2019 year-end—so as to minimize any distortions created by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Jacques Aschenbroich

Valeo

Revenue: $22B, Market cap: $8B

Employees: 115k in 33 countries

Career highlights

Valeo: Chair (2016–present), CEO (2009–present)

French Prime Minister’s office (1987–1988)

On the boards of Veolia and BNP Paribas

CEO impact

Turned Valeo from a French “department store” for automotive parts into a...