What Sets Successful CEOs Apart

https://hbr.org/2017/05/what-sets-successful-ceos-apart

157 64 9 years ago

tldr "In the end, our research shows, leadership success is not a function of unalterable traits or unattainable pedigree. Nor is there anything exotic about the key ingredients: decisiveness, the ability to engage stakeholders, adaptability, reliability.

While there is certainly no “one size fits all” approach, focusing on these essential behaviors will improve both a board’s likelihood of choosing the right CEO—and an individual leader’s chances of succeeding in the role."

Somewhat self serving for the authors research/advisory company IMO and surprisingly non specific based on the confidence of the headline

clock_tower• 9 years ago

What I'm most surprised by is their straw-man alternative: "unalterable traits or unattainable pedigree," _in 2017_.

"I say, Langley, HBR is pure bosh. They've no respect at all for proper breeding, and their attitude towards Mr. Spencer's impeccable theories is shocking, really."

You'd think they'd disparage education, money, and connections, instead of inborn character and aristocratic bloodline... (Unless, of course, you _do_ need education, money, and connections, and they want some safer strawman to knock down.)

tlogan2• 9 years ago

Typical HBR article.

Sure. Decisiveness, adaptability, reliability, etc. are great.

But the biggest problem is when the CEO is decisive, the CEO is engaging the team, the CEO is adopting to environment and the CEO is reliable - but the CEO is doing it all wrong. I.e., the CEO just doesn't have a clue.

As Napoleon said (and many others): whoever is industrious and stupid should be shot on the spot.

The best CEOs are the one who are lazy and very smart. Lazy? Because they will delegate their vision to other people. Smart? The CEO will have the right vision and delegate to the right people.

vacri• 9 years ago

I've worked in a small startup with a lazy CEO. That's not the descriptor you're looking for. A good CEO lives and breathes the company, and also delegates.

A lazy CEO does things like not supply payslip information because he couldn't be bothered, or spends the afternoons watching sportsball next to his colleagues who are working.

foobarian• 9 years ago

Maybe the intended attribute was the opposite of micromanager.

Gustomaximus• 9 years ago

That's incompetent as well as lazy. The saying refers to someone who is intelligent yet lazy. An intelligent CEO would have delegated payslips to someone who would get the job done. Also an intelligent CEO wouldn't let you know he was bunking off all day for moral.

deepsun• 9 years ago

Disagree about lazy CEO. I worked in a startup with lazy CEO, and it was a disaster. I also worked in a startup with hard-working CEO, who knew every single knob of our product, and it was much better.

Because they will delegate their vision to other people.

Other people means you, even if it's totally outside your area of competence, but rather CEO's.

tlogan2• 9 years ago

With "lazy CEO" I'm referring to other myth which is talking how successful CEOs are waking up at 4:30am, then they go run, mediate for 90 minutes, don't drink coffee, don't eat meat, and then work will 10:30pm. Every day.

bisRepetita• 9 years ago

Counter example. I worked in a company with a lazy CEO, present 3 hours a week. But a great team, paid well. We were happy and accomplished some very good work.

Not saying this is the way to go. But to this day, I am surprised it worked out.

unclebucknasty4• 9 years ago

I think you guys are falling victim to the same oversimplification implied by the article. That is, that you can boil the CEO's success-potential down to a handful of traits.

The article is interesting, and there probably is generally value in the traits outlined but, no discrete set of characteristics is deterministic. Not only are other personality factors involved, but it also depends on the product, team, etc. The lazy CEO might be perfect when paired with the workaholic CTO.

Or, as others have put it, it's complicated.

CalRobert2• 9 years ago

Confirmation bias, mostly.

Jerry2• 9 years ago

Don't forget selection bias. HBR is infamous for these types of articles and studies. They select a bunch of successful CEOs or business persons, they figure out what they have in common and then they release a list of traits or practices that make them successful.

AznHisoka• 9 years ago

Sounds like survivor bias. It was the same thing that made the book "Good to great" complete nonsense!

ec1096853• 9 years ago

How so?

mck-• 9 years ago

Only 7% of the high-performing CEOs we studied had an undergraduate Ivy League education, and 8% of them didn’t graduate from college at all.

If you confuse correlation with causation, you could say that it's better to be a drop out than graduate from Ivy League

rf15• 9 years ago

I will, because it fits my agenda!

Also, interesting.

ec1096853• 9 years ago

Ivy League school graduates make up much less than 8% of the working age population, so it over represents.

Ma8ee• 9 years ago

In this case the relevant number is what percentage of all CEO's that are Ivy League graduates.

grandalf• 9 years ago

The ideal skill set for a CEO varies dramatically at different stages of company growth.

There are likely some universals, but those are the least useful areas to consider and the most hand wavy.

11thEarlOfMar2• 9 years ago

Um... Don't they need a control group of randomly selected persons?

'Decisive' Ok, but are they more decisive than a baseball coach?

'Engaging for Impact' More or less than a car salesperson?

'Adapting Proactively' Homeless persons adapt, and can be surprisingly resourceful, too.

'Delivering Reliably' Most manufacturing managers have this trait, too. If they don't, they aren't manufacturing managers for long.

From the results of the study, one would infer that if they adopt these 4 traits, they will become CEOs. But that's laughable. These 4 traits are supplemental and supportive to getting there, but not causal. In my opinion, a CEO needs to be driven. They need to be going somewhere that they can convince a lot of other different types of people to follow them to. They have to have a sense of agency that leads them to want to be in charge. Only then do those 4 behaviors make a difference.

This article is like taking a bunch of measurements from professional athletes to determine what made them athletes, ignoring that all the physical abilities and training could not get them there without the drive to achieve. That has to come first.

nickthemagicman• 9 years ago

I love your response. I hate vague sentimentalities like this.

api2• 9 years ago

This is most business writing. Most of it is cargo cultism built from post rationalization of survivorship bias. There are so many factors that go into success or failure that it's very hard to ascribe causality, so superstition and folk wisdom prevails.

You find this in lots of other areas with similar characteristics. All "theories of history," etc.

TheOtherHobbes• 9 years ago

I'm never sure whether I should be amused or horrified by how much business writing tends to run on sentiment and emotion rather than empiricism.

It seems to be more about Management Feels - up to Board level - and not so much about learning how to get things done.

If you can sell a combination of subtle narcissistic flattery with enthusiastic promises of predictability, control, and guaranteed success your books will do extremely well - even if the advice is simplistic harmful nonsense.

kinkrtyavimoodh• 9 years ago

I was with you until you proposed your own fifth point as if THAT is the true one. I can posit questions about your point about being driven too.

More or less than most athletes eyeing an Olympic gold?

jtmarmon• 9 years ago

He says it's his opinion which is different from drawing conclusions from a study

11thEarlOfMar2• 9 years ago

Meaning, driven to be CEO is the initial requirement to becoming CEO (in my opinion).

Honestly, this would have been much more interesting to me if they'd simply asked these CEOs what was it that produced the drive to lead a company.

unclebucknasty4• 9 years ago

From the results of the study, one would infer that if they adopt these 4 traits, they will become CEOs

The article is about what distinguishes successful CEOs, not just what traits lead to people becoming CEOs.

Don't they need a control group of randomly selected persons?
In my opinion, a CEO needs to be driven...

I read the study differently. That is, less successful CEOs were the control. So, the idea is that whatever traits led to people landing in the CEO role (including, possibly, being driven); the traits outlined were those that set apart the successful CEOs.

duxup• 9 years ago

Also wouldn't some of those be traits of a bad CEO? You can be decisively bad... and so on.

dilemma2• 9 years ago

I think that the best definition of a good CEO is that the company they run performs well (relative competitors, market).

Of course, now the question shifts to how exactly do you define good performance. But in the end, that is all that matters.

tensor• 9 years ago

How do you know how much they "run" the company? Perhaps they have another exec who effectively runs the company, or perhaps there are a committee of execs that run the company.

Klockan• 9 years ago

From the results of the study, one would infer that if they adopt these 4 traits, they will become CEOs.

How did you reach this conclusion? It is as dumb as reading an article stating that good doctors have an attention for detail and then thinking that you could get a job as a doctor just by demonstrating attention for detail. The article just states that for people who already are CEO's these traits are important and that boards should consider them more, this makes it clear that these traits are not the only things necessary in order for someone to be considered for a CEO position. It even notes in the beginning that most boards undervalues these traits meaning that that someone who focuses on different traits should have greater success in attaining a CEO position.

true_religion• 9 years ago

It is as dumb as reading an article stating that good doctors have an attention for detail and then thinking that you could get a job as a doctor just by demonstrating attention for detail.

To take your analogy a bit further, CEOs like doctors aren't chosen because they already have these traits.

You become a doctor by graduating medical school, and if you have good attention to detail then you'll be a more successful doctor.

CEOs simply emerge into the role, and if they are also decisive, engaging, proactive and reliable then they're more successful than if they were not.

c3534l• 9 years ago

The way you'd want to do this, I think, is take a selection of people and follow up to see who was the most successful. If it was a 10 year study, they could have easily done it. And the traits seem to be derived from little more than subjective assessment. It's hitting my business school BS detector red flags: an arbitrary enumeration of things that has a weird focus on the exact number of them; vague buzzword laden categories; a lack of reference to related studies and papers; pointless citations to tangentially related information; vague implied promises for success, a "call to action," and other techniques used in marketing; and of course if you follow the link to where their "research" is you get a free personality quiz to determine if you have CEO thetans or whatever, and you can learn more about it by giving them money.

You know, I think the most valuable thing I got from my business degree is being able to precisely identify the exact flavors of bullshit getting passed around in the business world.

thesumofall• 9 years ago

Not a big believer in generic traits either (I much more believe it's the right combination of the company's situation and the leaders abilities), but didn't they take CEO candidates and compared them to those that made it? And then they looked at outcomes?

A detailed sample of 930 CEO candidates across the companies of all sizes and covering 19 out of 20 NAICS industry sectors which we compared to other c-suite executives.

skewart• 9 years ago

From the results of the study, one would infer that if they adopt these 4 traits, they will become CEOs.

Did you read the article? They were looking at what makes some existing CEOs more successful than other CEOs. Nowhere did they say these traits were what allowed people to become CEOs. In fact they kind of said the opposite - boards tend to over-index on different traits, like overt confidence and extroverted charisma, when hiring.

vikascoder• 9 years ago

What sets successful CEOs apart? : Luck

unclebucknasty4• 9 years ago

Some truth to that. Then again, you see some who are serially successful.

That brings up another factor that is probably more important than luck: other people's belief that the CEO will be successful.

mathgeek• 9 years ago

I wonder how often this is a result of (or at least heavily influenced by) the luck of being born to a certain set of parents / social circles.

elchief• 9 years ago

HBR is full of shit

- me, MBA

Steeeve• 9 years ago

I find the skepticism in this discussion interesting.

While it may seem obvious that a decisive leader is a better leader, it's not necessarily a trait that floats to the top of the list. The same goes for all of these traits.

I have had the opportunity to work under leadership that exhibits all of these traits and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the combination is rare and it is very effective.

simonswords82• 9 years ago

I agree, I suspect most of the people on HN have never worked with a good CEO, or perhaps in or around a senior management role.

m3kw9• 9 years ago

How about the one trait that is always underrated - Luck

davebryand• 9 years ago

They forgot the question mark at the end of that title...

And the answer is: they don't read hbr.org

0xbear• 9 years ago

What sets successful CEOs apart is that everyone quickly forgets about unsuccessful ones.

cbsmith• 9 years ago

One of these days, I'm going to read an article like this, and it is going to say something like, "the people that work for them" or "the organization".

Animats• 9 years ago

One of the more concrete remarks there is that successful CEOs spent about 50% of their time on long-term issues. Less successful CEOs spent much less. One of the traps of management is being driven by incoming problems. That's part of management, but it's not the biggest part, especially as you move up.

There's also the fact that if you spend most of your time dealing with problems, you spend too much time talking to the screwups in your organization. Spending time with the people who aren't having problems is important. They're the ones that can move things forward.

paulpauper• 9 years ago

1. vision (Elon musk , Walt Disney, Steve Jobs)

2. Calculated risk taking (Meg Whitman buying paypal in 2002, Zuckerberg buying Instagram in 2013 when everyone said it was too expensive ) In both instances, although there were risks, they were still relatively small compared to the parent company.

3. the business itself being a success. A good CEO can only do so much if the business is not viable or is struggling due to various macro factors outside of the CEO's control.

4. All-around good execution (Jeff Bezos comes to mind here)

kwhitefoot• 9 years ago

Before asking this question we need to to ask what counts as successful. There can be multiple definitions depending on who you ask.

ThomPete• 9 years ago

A succesful business. That's about it. In most cases.

Sure there are anomalies, but in most cases being a CEO for a growing business in a growing industry rather than some unique talent.

honestoHeminway• 9 years ago

Earn money, reduce risks. Ballmer and not steve jobs did that.

So i guess the answer- besides CEO-people manipulation skills is too think ahead of societys development, anticipate future demands, and invest there, while ignoring the crowd yelling insanity.

thinbeige• 9 years ago

Slightly OT: Would love know how many of those who commented here are or were CEOs.

throwme_1980• 9 years ago

Wow, finally an honest article, why hold on to mediocre employees , no need to buy donuts or pretend this is a 'people focus' company. What matters is your bottom line

dexterdog• 9 years ago

Buying donuts makes people happy at work. Not buying them means that anybody who wants one will have to go out of his way to get one.

I teched for an HR firm years ago. Company lunch every day. People spent half the time on lunch vs going out and talked with their co-workers usually about work or took care of the water cooler talk then. It was just one of the checkboxes on the list of reasons not to leave. It was definitely a profit for the company in the end.

chrisgd• 9 years ago

Mostly luck

YouTubecomments• 9 years ago

Government subsidies

HacklesRaised• 9 years ago

And if they don't have innate leadership qualities:

Example Integrity Respect

You have just created a narcissist asshole who blames everyone else for their failure before they move on to their next 'I am a successful CEO venture'.

anjc• 9 years ago

I love the comments here. This is typical business bullshit....where's the control group....nm the significant amount of data and analysis, it's actually all about luck...typical HBR...

Do you dimwits understand the general concept of research at all?

What Sets Successful CEOs Apart

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