CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest

Summary

New?York?Times Bestseller • Wall?Street?Journal Bestseller

From McKinsey & Company, the world’s most influential management consulting firm, comes CEO Excellence, an insight-packed leadership book that reveals how the best CEOs think and act—based on interviews with elite leaders from Netflix, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, Sony, and more.

Being a CEO at a major company is one of the toughest executive roles—Fortune?500 CEOs often face massive stakes, yet many fail early: 30% don’t last three years, and 40% are deemed ineffective within eighteen months. What separates successful CEOs from the rest?

The authors began with over 2,400 public-company CEOs, narrowed to an elite sixty-seven who participated in multi-hour interviews. Among them: Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Kazuo Hirai (Sony), Ken Chenault (American Express), Mary Barra (GM), Peter Brabeck-Letmathe (Nestlé), and others—offering rich insight into CEO best practices, leadership strategy, and business execution.

Their candid conversations and McKinsey’s data reveal how the top CEOs use core mindsets and signature practices—across strategy, culture, talent, stakeholder engagement, board relations, and personal effectiveness—to deliver extraordinary results.

Practical, unprecedented in scope, and essential for leaders at every level, CEO Excellence is a management manual grounded in real-world CEO experience and leadership innovation.