CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest

by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982179670
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	03/15/2022
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	77,483
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 5.90(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Carolyn Dewar is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company. She has published over thirty articles in the Harvard Business Review and the McKinsey Quarterly and is a frequent keynote speaker.

Scott Keller is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company. He is the author of six books, including Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Create Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Vikram (Vik) Malhotra is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company where he has worked since 1986. He has served on McKinsey’s Board of Directors and as McKinsey’s Managing Partner of the Americas.

Editorial Reviews

01/24/2022

“The best CEOs create a game-changing vision for their company,” write Dewar, Keller, and Malhotra, all senior partners at management consultancy McKinsey, in their peppy debut. In setting out to identify “CEOs who moved the needle most,” the trio looked primarily at executives from the largest public companies with six or more years of experience who delivered returns to shareholders, then “opened the aperture” to include some women and minority CEOs who made an impact, as well. They interviewed each extensively, and surfaced six key responsibilities: “setting the direction, aligning the organization, mobilizing through leaders, engaging the board, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness.” The best CEOs, they write, keep their eye on all six. The survey’s strength is in its wealth of case studies—the authors cover successes and failures at such companies as Best Buy, Intuit, and Netflix, and outline how effective leaders have dealt with boards (adopting a mindset where “my role is to help directors help the business”), connected with stakeholders (understanding their “motivations, hopes, and fears” helps), and lived their “to-be”—in addition to their to-do—lists. Conversational and thoughtful, this survey will help struggling CEOs get back on track. Agent: Lynn Johnston, Lynn Johnston Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

New York Times Bestseller

Wall Street Journal Bestseller

“Breaks it all down...a master class in leadership...knowing the six mindsets of the most visionary businesses could mean the difference between sinking and swimming for business leaders.”
—Business Insider

“Impressive...an important new book.”
—Barron’s

“Interviews CEOs (refreshingly, not just the usual suspects), finds out what makes them tick, and formulates a set of maxims and observations...A satisfying handbook for future moguls.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Remarkable...Any smart CEO looking to not just survive but thrive would do well to read and heed this book’s insights.”
—David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-executive chairman of The Carlyle Group and New York Times bestselling author of How to Lead

“Pulls back the curtain on how some of the world’s greatest business leaders have achieved success...Valuable lessons.”

—Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO, and cofounder of Blackstone

From the Publisher

2021-12-21
A readable study of the habits of mind of successful corporate leaders.

Ever since In Search of Excellence was released in 1982, there’s been a surge of books, good and bad, on how to run businesses better. Falling toward the good-to-middling part of the spectrum, this book takes a familiar tack: interview CEOs (refreshingly, not just the usual suspects), find out what makes them tick, and formulate a set of maxims and observations: “the best CEOs…are exceptional futurists,” for instance, studying the commercial landscape closely and even obsessively to forecast trends and shifts. “Doing so enables them to place bets before these trends become conventional wisdom and to maintain conviction when others inevitably criticize their choices,” write the authors, who worked from a list of some 2,000 CEOs and narrowed it to exclude leaders with terms of fewer than six years. Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill increased Alcoa’s revenues fivefold during his tenure as CEO not just by pushing the company’s products, but by giving employees a sense of ownership and “creating a habit of excellence.” Brad Smith of Intuit did much the same thing by broadcasting meetings with his dozen-odd direct reports to the “top 400 leaders in the company,” giving them an opportunity to buy into the organizational culture and goals of the firm. Gail Kelly, former CEO of Westpac, emphasizes the importance of building strong relationships with the company’s board members, especially its chair, while many other leaders struggle to balance time spent within the company and with external stakeholders, with an average of about 30% spent on the latter, “but with a high standard deviation.” Several leaders insist that work can’t be all-consuming but also that leadership has to center on things that can be controlled, especially where one devotes time and effort. The authors include practical worksheets and bios of the contributors, which include the heads of Mastercard, General Motors, and Duke Energy.

A satisfying handbook for future moguls.

Kirkus Reviews