Automating work (45 percent): As Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman explained when speaking to analysts, “Tech spend is going up … but that’s good because it’s displacing things we would otherwise be doing manually, which we shouldn’t be doing manually.” Healthcare provider Humana, for example, has reduced nursing turnover by leveraging technology to reduce administrative tasks. Walmart has used automation to cut in half the number of steps needed to ship products at some of its e-commerce distribution centers.

Valeo’s Jacques Aschenbroich says he thinks like an owner to secure the long term fate of the company. Being bold and right is far easier said than done, but the best CEOs show courage to act in the face of uncertainty. Vik Malhotra: Some said, “This job is fun.” One told us, “This is like when I was on my high school basketball team: I’ve got all my buddies, we all have a common goal, and we are rushing like crazy.” That sense of joy and fun can permeate the organization. Many of these CEOs are also openly authentic. They have passions and outside interests and fears, and they bring their whole selves to work.Carolyn Dewar: Just as CEOs need to manage their own energy in series of sprints, they need to help their organizations do the same. With every sprint you need a period of recovery, consolidation, and regrouping. We are in that period now when everyone is trying to figure out, “How do we inspire the pace forward, so we are not just going on adrenaline but relying on something meaningful to energize people?” Scott Keller: Personal resilience also stems from having a kitchen cabinet, so to speak, that is a source of unfiltered truth. You will know what people are thinking—the whispers before the screams—and can act on it early. Additionally, some CEOs said their faith gave them a foundation that helped them not get caught up in the role. They also talked about keeping perspective by coming into the office and looking at their chair and thinking, “People will talk to that chair today, not to me as a person. I need to sit in that chair and do the right thing, but I can’t mistake the two.” The best CEOs build their vision by looking for where various aspects of their business and the market intersect. Best Buy former CEO Hubert Joly explains that setting the right course is, “at the intersection of four circles: what the world needs, what you are good at, what you are passionate about, and how you can make money.” beyond controller to coach, enabling the organization to constantly evolve through rapid learning, and enabling colleagues to build new mindsets, knowledge, and skills Former CEO of automotive parts maker Rod O’Neal said one cause of their success were the things they didn’t do. He methodically worked through the consequences using a decision tree.

The best CEOs don’t just confront their emotions, they also plan how to avoid what Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express, describes as “falling into the abyss.” “Don’t ignore it. It is very important to be thoughtful [about life after being the CEO],” he recommends. Practically speaking, that means that before leaving the role, you should identify what’s important to you. In Chenault’s case, even though he didn’t know precisely what he’d be doing, he says, “When opportunities came my way, I was ready, because I had thought about them.” 11 Marc A. Feigen and Ron Williams, “The CEO’s guide to retirement,” Harvard Business Review, September 14, 2018. Marjorie Yang of Esquel reinforces the importance of showing up with a positive attitude. “My job is to drive away fear,” she says. “Fear is the worst enemy of any business….As a leader, my job is to maintain...and radiate confidence.” The “finish the job” notion, of course, doesn’t just apply to succession planning. We’ve seen some CEOs take their foot off the gas once they’ve decided that it’s time to go. Given that the time between notifying the board of your intention to leave and when they’ll name your successor is a matter of years, the institution can lose some of its competitive edge if the sitting CEO doesn’t stay focused to the very end. It may sound obvious, but as former Cadence Design Systems CEO Lip-Bu Tan shares, “A lot of temptations can derail you; you have to stay focused on the things that really matter.” Hand over gracefully Sean Brown: When that allegorical boat became unstable, how did the CEOs you interviewed course-correct? Management processes: Ensure coherence. The CEO typically delegates management processes to other executives: the CFO looks after budgeting and sometimes strategy as well; the chief human resources officer (CHRO) looks after talent management and workforce planning; the CIO looks after technology investment; and so on. However, sensible individual processes can cohere into a clumsy system that results in more confusion and wasted effort than accountability and value. Managers pushed to agree to stretch targets find at year’s end that they are being held accountable for full delivery; sandbagging ensues. Long-term strategies are set, yet talent promotions are based on near-term results. Urgent product ideas are approved, only to get bogged down in long technology queues and one-size-fits-all risk-management processes. Excellent CEOs don’t allow one management process to foil another. They require executives to coordinate their decision making and resource assignments to ensure that management processes reinforce priorities and work together to propel execution and continual refinement of the strategy. Board engagement: Help directors help the businessThis isn’t to say that there aren’t some situations that warrant exceptions to this line of thinking. For example, where the board has skipped over a leadership generation to advance a talented but “green” up-and-comer for the role. Or where the incumbent CEO has been deeply involved in a not-yet-completed acquisition or integration. Embrace what’s next One of a CEO’s first tasks is to carefully shape their top teams—and they differ in what they seek. After confirming expertise and proven experience, some leaders look for emotional intelligence, while others value passion, or the ability to balance the short and long term. One thing most CEOs agree on? Do not surround yourself with people who are afraid to disagree with you. Focusing on those 18 responsibilities, we conducted extensive research to determine what mindsets and practices distinguish excellent CEOs. We mined our proprietary database on CEO performance, which is the largest of its kind, containing 25 years’ worth of data on 7,800 CEOs from 3,500 public companies across 70 countries and 24 industries. We also drew on what we’ve learned from helping hundreds of CEOs to excel, from preparing for the job and transitioning into it, through navigating difficult decisions and moments of truth, to handing their responsibilities over to a successor. You really need to get out of the way,” suggests Caterpillar’s Owens, “and let your successor critique what you did and talk about what needs to go way better.” Intuit’s Smith concurs: “The last step is to celebrate your successor’s success,” he says. “There’s nothing worse than the Ghost of Christmas Past commenting on whether a leader is doing everything the way they should.” Smith holds this view despite having successfully played the executive chairman role at Intuit. “Honestly, in hindsight, I should have just stepped away,” he says. “That’s not because we had any dynamic tension. I simply think it’s better to exit, and let the CEO do their thing.” When it comes time for a transition, if you’ve engaged your board and head of human resources the way Smith and Gupta did, the board will have clarity on both what attributes are needed and who the best internal candidates are. Caterpillar’s Owens puts it starkly: “At any large company, shame on them if they don’t have at least three strong candidates to take over the top job.” Westpac’s Kelly adds nuance: “My style was to try to develop all of my executives. I always knew that two or three of them would pop out as the most natural successors.”

Talent: Match talent to value. Many CEOs have confided to us that they worry about asking the same few overstretched “usual suspects” to take extra assignments because they can’t trust the people who would otherwise perform them. The best CEOs take a methodical approach to matching talent with roles that create the most value. A crucial first step is discovering which roles matter most. Careful analysis typically produces findings that surprise even the savviest CEOs. Of the 50 most value-creating roles in any given organization, only 10 percent normally report to the CEO directly. Sixty percent are two levels below, and 20 percent sit farther down. Most surprising of all is that the remaining 10 percent are roles that don’t even exist. 6 Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger, Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019. Once these roles are identified, the CEO can work with other executives to see that these roles are managed with increased rigor and are occupied by the right people. Robust talent pipelines can also be developed so that important roles remain well staffed. The best CEOs ensure that their own role is included so that the board has viable, well-prepared internal candidates to consider for succession. They’re less a ‘taker’ of their fate and more of a ‘shaper’ – constantly looking for and acting on opportunities that bend the curve of history.” With their vision statements, the most successful CEOs didn’t just raise aspiration levels, they changed the definition of success. An example from the COVID-19 era offers a useful illustration of this new approach to leadership. In pursuit of a vaccine breakthrough, at the start of the pandemic Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel increased the frequency of executive meetings from once a month to twice a week. The company implemented a decentralized model enabling teams to work independently and deliver on the bold goal of providing 100 million doses of vaccines in 12 months. “The pace was unprecedented,” Bancel said. What is the impact of this new approach to leadership? What’s the problem? Simple: bad handoffs. Consider New York magazine’s description of one such handoff at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics: “As the pair attempted to pass the baton, they looked more like Keystone Cops than two of the five fastest men in the world.” 1 David Gendelman, “Why can’t the U.S. relay team figure out how to pass a baton?,” New York, August 5, 2021. As a result, the team failed to even advance to the final. On the other hand, when well-synchronized handoffs happen, relay times are typically two to three seconds faster than the sum of the best times of individual runners.That they did. The team analyzed more than 20 years’ worth of data on 7,800 CEOs from 3,500 public companies across 70 countries and 24 industries to identify CEOs whose actions have led to breakaway success. Then they interviewed 67 of the 200 CEOs who met vital criteria, including sustainability, performance, and ethical behavior, to learn about the skills and practices that have driven their success. Hamilton (the business head) tells Mercedes (the central functions) what is needed to win the race, and they’ll bring it to him.