The modern leader faces a leadership environment that is rapidly growing in complexity, grappling with roughly twice as many issues on a CEO’s desk as just five to seven years ago. This pressure has driven senior partners Kurt Strovink and Carolyn Dewar, co-leaders of McKinsey & Company’s CEO Practice—the firm’s top “CEO whisperers”—to empirically study the world’s top 200 corporate chiefs.
Their new book, A CEO for All Seasons, breaks down the mindsets and methods required to succeed in a role that 68% of incumbent CEOs admitted they felt “ill-prepared” for when they stepped into the shoes. While the research conducted by Strovink, Dewar, and co-authors Scott Keller and Vikram Malhotra found that these elite performers possess unique habits for challenging complacency, fostering brutal candor, and staying humble enough to keep learning.
