CEO Excellence

Leading one of the world's largest companies is among the most demanding jobs in business. The stakes can run into the billions or even trillions, and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of employees may hinge on a single chief executive's decisions. Yet being an accomplished, promising executive does not guarantee success in the top role. Roughly 30 percent of Fortune 500 chief executives leave within three years, and about two in five new leaders are seen as struggling within their first eighteen months. Those who carry the responsibility of an entire organization need a dependable guide to what excellent leadership looks like.

The authors, who work at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, began with more than 2,400 chief executives of publicly traded companies. Successive rounds of screening narrowed that field to 67 leaders, who agreed to take part in in-depth interviews that lasted several hours each. Participants included Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Reed Hastings of Netflix, Kazuo Hirai of Sony, Ken Chenault of American Express, Mary Barra of General Motors, and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe of Nestlé.

The conversations were candid and wide-ranging. From them the authors assembled a body of mindsets and day-to-day actions that, in their view, produce unusually strong results, and they present these as practical lessons for anyone running a large organization.