The goal of those meetings is to challenge him and present him with new perspectives, but he is careful not to create the illusion of democracy.None of this means that CEOs should behave as autocrats or lone wolves. “Consensus is good, but it’s too slow, and sometimes you end up with the lowest common denominator,” says Christophe Weber, CEO of Takeda Pharmaceutical. The industry and the company context determine which behaviors and skills are most important in any particular situation.
Typically we see “take no prisoners” CEOs last only as long as the company has no choice but to submit to shock therapy.
This data was gathered through structured interviews with every executive and was supplemented in some cases by interviews with the business associates of the executive.To identify attributes predictive of becoming a CEO and to compare CEOs’ attributes with those of other C-suite executives, we closely examined a sample of 930 CEO candidates, who represented companies of all sizes and 19 out of 20 NAICS industry sectors.
While he’d had some misses in the past, he was now successfully running the company’s largest business unit—its crown jewel.
Yet more than 78% of that subgroup of candidates ultimately won the top job.
However, when we dug through our data, looking at the ratings our consultants had given candidates when evaluating them on fit for a CEO job and performance on 30 management competencies (for example, holding people accountable and the ability to motivate a team), we found an interesting connection.
We believe a long-term focus helps because it makes CEOs more likely to pick up on early signals.
At the top of the ladder, the stakes are high and the demands intense. They set a high bar and focus on performance relevant to the role rather than personal comfort or loyalty—two criteria that often lead to bad calls.To be clear, there’s no perfect mix of the four behaviors that works for every CEO position. These CEOs often get ousted as soon as the business emerges from crisis mode—they lose the support of their teams or of board members who’ve grown tired of the collateral damage. This information was used to differentiate (a) candidates who got hired for CEO roles from those who didn’t and (b) CEOs who met or exceeded expectations from those who underperformed. Art Collins, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, told us: “Employees and other key constituencies will quickly lose faith in leaders who waffle or backtrack once a decision is made.” And if decisions don’t turn out well? From 2000 to 2013, 25% of the One major reason is that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what boards of directors think makes for an ideal CEO and what actually leads to high performance.Findings from a database of 17,000 C-suite assessments reveal that successful CEOs demonstrate four specific behaviors that prove critical to their performance: They’re decisive, they engage for impact, they adapt proactively, and they deliver reliably.The chief executive role is a tough one to fill.