We interviewed 67 CEOs for our new book, CEO Excellence (which I wrote with Scott Keller and Vikram Malhotra), and many of them said they were surprised at how ill prepared they felt when they stepped into those shoes. And these are the cream of the cream! We looked at 20 years of data on more than 2,400 public-company CEOs to find the very top performers. These top execs went in thinking they knew what to do, but when we asked them to look back, almost all of them said that they were surprised by what the job actually was and what it took to do it well.

By the time you become a CEO, you’ve already had really big jobs—you have set strategies, figured out teams, managed organizations, overseen really big P&Ls, directed a region or product. But there is just nothing like being a CEO. Bill George of Medtronic put it really well: “You think you’re ready, but you’ve really only been a COO before. Until you’re a CEO, you don’t see all the pieces.”

One part of the surprise is that you have so much more to do that needs doing all the time. There are so many elements to the job, both internally and externally, and you must be on top of all of them all of the time. The breadth and the complexity of the role are unique, you’re doing it under more scrutiny than ever, and your decisions have more ripple effects than ever.

And it can be lonely. Many people have written that this happens because you are elevated and have no “team” of peers. But Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told us that it’s more fundamental than that. He described it as a problem of information asymmetry. No one else sees everything that you see—not your organization or your board. You see the strategy, the organization, the internal and external stakeholders—all of that—and the intersections between them. You are the single point of integration for all of it. That’s what can be really lonely.

All the external stuff is so new and challenging. For example, once upon a time CEOs might have come into the job thinking that they just had to manage the relationship with the board, keep it at arm’s length, and let the members do their thing. But these excellent CEOs have discovered that this isn’t true at all. They learn how much the board can really help the business. Getting that out of a board takes a lot of time: you want to help the board evolve so that it has the right talent to advise a changing business; you have to give the directors the information they need to see the full context; you have to be radically transparent with them. That takes time.

Then there are the new external issues that were never part of the standard CEO remit: climate events, employees’ vaccination status, or whether to enter or leave certain countries because of geopolitical concerns. Absolutely nothing that you’ve done prepares you for these kinds of exogenous emergencies, which seem to be happening more and more. And CEOs are expected to take a stand and have a point of view.

In other words, CEOs don’t have time to do the many things they’ve never done before, which they now have to do constantly. It’s become a superhuman job, and it isn’t going to get any easier. That’s why the book tries to focus on six key mindsets the best CEOs develop. These mindsets seem critical to helping new CEOS succeed despite all this complexity. 

I want to note one crucial mindset: the best CEOs come to understand that they should concentrate on the things that only they can do. What is the work that no one else is equipped to do? What are the things that only you, as the ultimate point of integration, can do? Those need to be the focus of your time. Everything else must be pushed out to others because there just aren’t enough hours in the day. 

I mention that one because it’s an example of why I love to study and work with CEOs. Their experiences can inform what all businesspeople do—even people who never aspire to be a CEO, right? Any leader, at any position, wants to think boldly, reframe what could be possible, allocate important resources to the efforts he or she thinks are most important. Getting your team right, working with your stakeholders: these are all just good things for anyone to do. And this idea of focusing on what only you can do? That seems to resonate for so many people I talk to. The lessons of CEOs apply widely. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carolyn Dewar is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

IN TWO WEEKS

Is the metaverse a passing fancy or a serious opportunity? Companies are asking the question.