No one starts their management career wanting to be ordinary. We want to do the right thing. We want to help shape companies for success, and often, we want to meet the challenge of taking on a company in trouble and turning it around. In short, we want to be great at our jobs. One of the problems of achieving excellence as a CEO is getting so lost in the day-to-day that we no longer see the big picture, and too many of us go from wanting to be great to wanting to just get by until the next job, or even better, until retirement.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins states three simple truths for great (not just good) leadership: “But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”
None of this is easy, but the quote does boil down the essence of good leadership. If we can keep that bus on the road and do it with the right people, we’ll be good, maybe great leaders, who remain excited about our roles. Yet juggling the people on the bus, including the ones who are weighing it down, can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction.
A record number of CEOs are deciding whether to be part of the great exodus or stay in their jobs these days. The first quarter of 2025 saw the highest quarterly total of CEO exits on record. In those three months, 646 U.S. leaders left. The rate moderated through the second half of the year, but annual totals remained well above previous norms. I’m convinced that most of these were people who were once excited about the prospect of leading a company.
Decide, Adapt, Invest
Maren Perry, Forbes Business Council member and founder of Arden Coaching, lists three qualities that distinguish great CEOs. The key behaviors her company identified were taking decisive action, adapting proactively, and investing in self-improvement. In her article, she cites data from the Harvard Business Review showing that 94 percent of executives who were rated poorly for decisiveness were penalized not for rushing decisions, but rather for their reluctance to make them. That aligns with what I’ve observed, including the inability or unwillingness to terminate employees.
Protect Your Time
Forbes author Kirk W. McLaren writes, “Every CEO eventually hits a point where time—not funding or opportunity—is the scarcest resource. Those who scale successfully don’t just manage their time better. They make different decisions about how they use it. They protect strategic space. They invest in their team. They say no more often.”
The Four Behaviors
Research conducted over 10 years as part of ghSmart’s CEO Genome Project found four behaviors common among CEOs who have succeeded by playing big. You can’t have all four, but you can learn and develop them. They are the following:
● Engaging for impact.
● Deciding with speed and conviction.
● Adapting proactively.
● Delivering reliably.
The fourth behavior, delivering reliably, the ability to produce consistent and predictable results, was found to be the most powerful of these four; ghSmart’s CEO Genome Project found that a stunning 94 percent of the strong CEO candidates they analyzed scored high on consistently following through on their commitments.
Leaders are paid the big bucks to follow through to deliver results, yet more than 40 percent of companies miss Wall Street earnings expectations each quarter. QuotaPath’s Compensation Trends report, Solving the Biggest Sales Compensation Challenges: Insights from 450+ Finance, RevOps, and Sales Leaders, found that 91 percent of respondents failed to meet sales quota expectations in 2024. Miss revenue projections, and you find yourself having to make onerous cost (and people) decisions.
We cannot afford to get swept away by our “to-do” lists. Don’t confuse your effort and intention with results. If you want to be a great CEO, not to mention if you want to survive and thrive as one, you have to execute. Maybe (just maybe) all this has something to do with people, teams, culture, and changing out (or not) team members. Ultimately, decisions—including tough decisions—are going to be an important part of what makes you a great CEO, so that you can keep that bus on the road.
Read the full article here