How to think and act like the best CEOs

—Alex and Axel

October 2025

The CEO role is at once indispensable and unlike any other in the organization. The scope of the job accounts for nearly half of a company’s performance, yet almost as many new CEOs fail to live up to the role’s demands in their first 18 months. Still, the best CEOs can have an outsize effect on moving their companies from average to top-quintile performers. How do they do it?

To answer this question, the authors of this 2019 classic start with the six main elements of the CEO role: setting the strategy, aligning the organization, leading the top team, working with the board, serving as the face of the company to external stakeholders, and managing one’s own time and energy. They then break down these elements into 18 specific responsibilities that fall exclusively to the CEO. Examples include making bold strategic moves early in their tenure, optimizing their companies’ organizational design by emphasizing both speed and agility, and prioritizing their scarce time by focusing on the work that only CEOs can do.

The CEO role is peerless and, these days, increasingly challenging. But these “leaders of leaders” can boost their capabilities by adopting the approaches that define CEO excellence. To learn more, read Carolyn Dewar and Scott Keller’s “The mindsets and practices of excellent CEOs.” 

Read our latest thinking on this classic topic

—Edited by Drew Holzfeind, editor, Chicago 

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