CEO Excellence [antikvár]

Introduction Excellence is never an accident. —Aristotle At the annual Leadership Forum hosted by McKinsey Company in the picturesque waterfront town of St. Michaels, Maryland, thirty soon-to-be CEOs were gathered in the conference room. On this rainy fall evening, the retreat's first day, everyone snapped to attention as the moderator, Vik (one of your coauthors), posed an intriguing question: "What does a CEO really Jo?" Without pause, the first guest speaker, a chief executive of one of the world's largest technology companies, responded, "1 can say with confidence that the role of the CEO boils down to . . ." He then expanded on each of three items with conviction and clarity. At the end of the night, everyone left feeling a mysterious veil had been lifted. That is, until the following morning's speaker, the leader of a multinational financial services company, answered Vik's same question. The guest articulated what she viewed as the three primary roles for a CEO, punctuating each with potent, reinforcing examples. They were an altogether different set than offered by the first night's speaker. That evening, the third and final CEO speaker, leader of one of the world's most prestigious academic medical centers, presented—you guessed it—yet another categorically different list of the three "most important" aspects of the CEO role. The next morning Scott and Carolyn (your two other coauthors) brought the retreat to a close, doing their best to crisply summarize the key takeaways. On the subsequent hour and a half drive to the nearest major airport, the three of us discussed how starkly different each guest speaker's list had been. We guessed that if we'd had a fourth speaker, we'd have yet another take on the CEO role. We all