These insights, a sample of which are excerpted below, go beyond the C-suite, and they can shape the way we confront everyday situations where we’re asked to lead—at work, at home, and in our communities. Don ’t surround yourself with “yes” people. 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.” 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. Stepping down from a powerful job can be very difficult. As former US President Harry Truman said, shortly after leaving office, “Two hours ago I could have said five words and been quoted in every capital of the world. Now I could talk for two hours, and nobody would give a damn.” 8 H. F. Graff, “When the term’s up, it’s better to go gracefully,” International Herald Tribune, January 26, 1988. Westpac’s Kelly highlights the emotional impact of having to move on. “For a lot of people, it’s ‘I am what I do, and I do my job,’ and that’s where their relevance and purpose come from,” she observes. “That’s really hard to leave.” Former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy shares an additional challenge she faced: “By the time you are at retirement age,” she exclaims, “your kids have left home too. It’s double retirement.” 9 Marc A. Feigen and Ron Williams, “The CEO’s guide to retirement,” Harvard Business Review, September 14, 2018.

Of course, you have to create a plan, but you have to co-create it. It doesn’t need to be perfect – the key is to create energy and manage energy.” Hamilton (the business head) tells Mercedes (the central functions) what is needed to win the race, and they’ll bring it to him.

So you want to be CEO. What are four key pieces of advice?

It’s worth noting most successful CEOs use the terms vision, mission, and company purpose as largely interchangeable. Mary Barra of GM changed ‘Win in the global auto industry’ to ‘Win by transforming transportation.’ To many people, teamwork means getting along, but to Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, “…the best team player is the one who puts up their hand and says, ‘I don ’t agree, because I don ’t think [this] is in the best interest of the client or the company. ’” Time management? It’s about the moment. Hence, as can be seen, CEOs need to move away from the day-to-day functioning of the company once the strategy has been formulated and leave it to the leaders to implement them while they engage with the Board and other stakeholders on important issues. Here often CEOs stumble and ignore these two aspects, as a result of which they are bogged down by mundane activities that often feed their egos as they believe they are in control of the organisation. Valeo’s Jacques Aschenbroich says he thinks like an owner to secure the long term fate of the company.

Carolyn was born and raised in Canada and studied economics and international relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Outside of work, she enjoys the California sunshine, cooking from the bounty of farmers markets, and sharing her love of art with her young children and husband. Ultimately, the adage, “It’s always better to drink wine a year early rather than a day too late,” also applies to CEO succession. As former Intuit CEO Brad Smith explains: “I had friends who stayed Additional considerations, such as making sure that in-person work and togetherness has a purpose, are important. Keeping an eye on inclusivity in hybrid work is also crucial. Listening to what employees want, with an eye to their lived experience, will be vital to leaders in these settings. And a focus on output, outcomes, results, and impact—rather than arbitrary norms about time spent in offices— may be a necessary adaptation in the hybrid era.Vik is a senior partner in New York. For 35 years, he has served clients across a range of industries and his consulting experience covers performance transformation, corporate strategy, business-unit strategy, growth strategy, organizational effectiveness, and operational improvement. It also pays to get your head of human resources intimately involved in this process. At Singaporean multinational banking and financial services corporation, DBS Bank, for example, CEO Piyush Gupta says, “For every job, mine included, we [my head of HR and I] work through what is the slate, who could do the job soon, who could do the job in three or five years. We then case manage 100-odd people. Who needs to move, where should we move them, how do we get them the exposure and growth they need to get from point A to point B. It’s very well structured.”

I started reading more about all kinds of subjects, including unrelated subjects, to combine the unrelated things into something new – not only in technical innovation but also in business. Leaders of other enterprises often define themselves as captains of the ship, but I think I’m more the ship’s architect or designer. That’s different from a captain’s role, in which the route is often fixed and the destination defined.” — Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier Before you start the handoff, it’s important to have an explicit up-front conversation with your successor to jointly shape the approach and how decision making will shift over time, and to create a concrete plan for how the handoff process will work. It’s also important to be explicit about what happens after stage three. With their vision statements, the most successful CEOs didn’t just raise aspiration levels, they changed the definition of success. Associated with this alignment is ‘organisation design’, which can involve doing away with certain positions and verticals and creating new ones. This can be a challenge because everywhere people matter and the reskilling of staff becomes important. Traditionally, this has taken a lot of time for companies to change and successful CEOs have to shorten the same. Getting new talent can be required to become more nimble-footed but the costs have to be weighed not just in terms of the salary bill, but also taking along the staff.

What are mentorship, sponsorship, and apprenticeship?

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.”