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Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others

May 26, 2017 / 31:45

This episode features Elena Litkinabotello, a partner at GHS Smart, discussing leadership and the CEO Genome Project. Key topics include the importance of decisiveness, reliability, relationship management, and adaptability in successful CEOs.

Elena shares her journey into leadership, starting from her early experiences helping others and transitioning into her role at GHS Smart. She emphasizes the significance of understanding what drives CEO performance through data rather than stereotypes.

The conversation highlights four critical behaviors identified in successful CEOs: decisiveness, reliability, relationship management, and adaptability. Elena explains how these traits contribute to effective leadership and organizational success.

Elena also discusses the cultural factors that influence leadership behaviors and the importance of learning from mistakes. She provides insights on how these findings can apply to leaders at all levels, not just CEOs.

The episode concludes with Elena's reflections on notable leaders and the universal applicability of the CEO Genome Project's findings.

TLDR

Elena Litkinabotello discusses key leadership traits from the CEO Genome Project, emphasizing decisiveness, reliability, relationship management, and adaptability.

Episode

31:45
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Our guest today is Elena Litkinabotello. She's a partner at GHS Smart and we're
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going to talk to her about leadership. Elena, thank you so much for joining us at knowledge at Wharton today. Thank
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you, Mico. Thanks for having me here. Uh before we talk about your research uh on
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the CEO genome project about which I want to hear everything. Uh how did you get interested in leadership?
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Oh gosh. Um so I was 14 years old. Um and I just noticed that uh my lots of people around
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me were coming to me for advice and that was my first epiphany that really what I
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love doing in my life is helping people helping be people be successful at whatever they do. Uh and then I had to
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send money back home. So I became an accountant when I came to the US and then I went to Wharton. And so of course
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with Wharton you want to do something really worthy with your time. So I went to Mckenzian company. Uh and then I
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realized that you know while I've changed kind of what I really passionate about hasn't changed since I was 14
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which is my best moments at McKenzie. We're really sitting across like we're
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sitting here from anybody. It didn't matter if they were CEO or anybody in the organization just feeling like in
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some way that conversation helped them be more successful. And so that brought me to GHS smart where you know we're
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really blessed to have a unique job that I never knew existed actually until I joined the firm. Um which is all we do
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is we help leaders be more successful. Uh and then as I kind of went on that journey, uh it became pretty clear that
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um while leadership overall is a really big topic, there are a couple of big pivot points or big pivot topics
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within that topic that really kind of if you can get those decisions right, a lot
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of things flow from that, which is how we got to the CEO genome. So let's talk
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a little bit about the CEO genome project. what are those couple of pivot points that you mentioned and what was
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your objective and what was your purpose in in doing what you did? Yeah, you know, so as a firm we've been helping
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CEOs and helping boards and investors select CEOs since 1995 and so we've always been kind of
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behind the scenes helping our clients make that decision. Um what really shocked me as
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I I I gradually had this awareness built in me that when I look at the pages of you know Wall Street Journal or you know
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Forbes or any any publication out there and then I really think about who I spend my time with counseling and
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advising CEOs and boards. I realized that boy, you know, the CEO that stares at you from the front pages of our, you
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know, publications or very wellrespected publications and CEOs I get to see up close and personal are just two very
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different pictures. And coming from a family of mathematicians, whenever something is unsettling, you know, I
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figure, well, we need to get some good data around this. Uh, and so that's how
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CEO genome project was born. It was really a desire to say, well, let's look
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behind the scenes. Let's really understand what drives performance. What do successful CEOs look like up close
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and personal? and do that not using anecdote or not over relying on any kind of particular um empirical experience
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but really digging into the data and research. And what did the data show? So the data was fascinating. Uh we embarked
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on the research. We weren't fishing for any particular hypothesis to prove or
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disprove it. Uh and so we were really open-minded to see what we find and we applied a multitude of analytical
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approaches. Um and what we found in terms of what didn't matter frankly surprised us as much as what we found of
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what didn't matter. So for example, you know, the one kind of big point that
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stared us in the face is that the this kind of stereotypical larger than-l life charismatic CEO who is, you know, never
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makes mistakes and is probably the smartest person in the room and, you know, rides in and out on a white horse
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with, you know, perfect unblenmished record really only exists in kind of urban legend, right? And that, you know,
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I've since then come to realize that really the only perfect CEOs I know are
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the ones who I don't know. and that any CEO, no matter how lustrious, no matter
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how successful, when you look back and in hindsight, they've all come into the
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role not prepared. So that's one thing we've learned is whenever we advise the
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board, we've we yet to find a board that feels that, you know, this individual is
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a slam dunk. It's a tough decision deciding who will get the role. So they look imperfect getting into the role.
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They look imperfect for much of the role. uh and very few uh kind of uh aspects of this you know big uh public
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stereotype that we have proved that to matter. So things for example, you know, if you looked at the publicly available
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bios of Fortune 500 CEOs, you've probably seen some research out there is gosh, if you didn't go to the right
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preschool, let alone the light right university, you're doomed. You're doomed
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to failure. Well, it's interesting because in our data set, we have the luxury of looking well beyond Fortune
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500. The companies in our data set, it's over 2,000 CEOs and over 18,000 executives that we've assessed. And it's
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it includes folks anywhere from Fortune 100 companies to hundred million dollar companies or 100 person dollar person
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company. And so what we found is actually in our data set only 7% of the executives um had Ivy League college
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education. 8% of the executives didn't graduate from college at all and in final analysis it didn't actually their
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their educational pedigree didn't really impact their performance. Wh why why is
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that? Wh what's what's your explanation? Well, you know, I think so kind of our
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philosophy as a firm is that it's really all about the fit to the role. So, it's
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not so much about people don't walk around as, you know, I'm sure you've
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heard this term of, you know, he's just a great general athlete, right? In practicality, whether or not someone
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will succeed in a specific situation depends on the context. It depends on how well their skill sets are matched to
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the what the job really requires, much more so than kind of on this theoretical set of uh, you know, perfection
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competencies, if you will, that that you might imagine. Um, the other big overarching theme that really stared us
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in the face when we dug into the data is that it's really much more about what
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you do and what your behaviors are and things that you skills and abilities that you develop in your life as opposed
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to traits that you happen to be born in into either traits or access right because to a large degree as much as you
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know we'd like to believe that uh great education is available to everyone having an undergraduate degree I from an
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Ivy League tool is as much a signal of access as it is the signal of lots of other things. Right? And so what we
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found that's just one example of findings, but other findings in the study is that yes, it helps to have a
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head start in some areas, but at the end of the day, what really matters is kind
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of what you do with what you where you given. So let's let let's drill a little
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deeper into those behaviors. And uh what I found interesting about your study is
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that you identified four specific behaviors that the CEOs who are successful do differently than those who
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may seem successful on the surface but eventually are not that successful. Could we talk one after the other about
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those four behavioral uh uh qualities uh and and and see how they make a difference? The first one if I remember
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right was that you found that the CEOs are very decisive. Exactly. Exactly. Tell us a little bit more about that. So
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what surprised us there right is we expected that we looked at quality of decision-m right and we expected that
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cos just make better decisions right by the time they get to the top and when they get selected it must be that they
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just have this uncanny insight that the rest of us don't share. What we were
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shocked to find out is that decisiveness does in fact relate to performance. Um,
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but it's actually more frequent that CEOs stand out for the speed of their decision-m, not simply the quality. Um,
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and so what was interesting, you know, just recently, you may have seen Jeff Bezos um, shared his shareholder letter.
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His shareholder letter could be kind of a primer on all of the four CEO behaviors. And on decision-m, he
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specifically talks about the fact that decision-m is quality times velocity. And that he calls them day two
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companies, companies that, you know, probably have been and still are very successful. but ultimately are not as
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dynamic, are not moving forward and not shaping the industries where they're in.
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Um he talks about those day two companies as being making high quality decisions but too slowly and he sets his
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aspiration for Amazon to always remain a day one company or being a disruptor if
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you will, right? As a company that makes good decisions and makes them very quickly. And so what what we find is um
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as you look at the executives even coming up through the ranks, you could see folks differentiate themselves on
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decisiveness at different stages in their career and CEOs stand out for being willing to make a decision. I
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wonder if you think there are any exceptions to that and I'll I'll tell you why I'm asking that. Uh I remember
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this is maybe about 20 years ago. I remember interviewing the CEO of a very large multinational consulting firm and
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I was talking to him about how he makes decisions and his response was that sometimes he makes decisions quickly and
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at other times he just doesn't make decisions for a very very long time. and
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and for the second category of decisions very often just by not making the decision the need to make the decision
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goes away. Did you find that in your study as well? Yeah, m it's really it's
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it's a great uh build on this behavior topic. Yes. So what we find is that um
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and look if the results of this study were published to CEOs only then the message
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probably would be number one think about which decisions shouldn't even land on
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your desk. So very successful CEOs are very careful. Um a lot of them will share that look in a given year I'll
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make three to four big decisions right and so the first question would be make sure that you don't have too many
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decisions because something's got to be wrong with your team if there are too
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many decisions that you feel you're the only right person to make. So that would
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be one and the second insights for CEOs only would be that kind of be thoughtful
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about applying the right time to make a decision the right kind of thoroughess and thoughtfulness to a decision at
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hand. Right? Depending on the type of decision, certainly if you're betting the company, right? Right. You will be
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really thoughtful. Um this study is really aimed to be helpful to a really broad audience
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regardless of their stage in their career. And this is where what we really focused on is decisiveness. Simply
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because when we look at what separates those that actually get into the CEO's
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shoes and become successful from those who could look like on the face of it, they may have all the same capabilities,
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it tends to be the speed that's the gating factor. So if that if that makes sense. Yeah. No, that that's that's
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really interesting. Um, thank you for So, when in doubt, I would say for most of us, when in doubt, if you sense and
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if you have a sense in your gut that you kind of know the right way to go, that's
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probably the right the the right answer. Now, if you're a CEO, CEOs do tend to be
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more decisive. So, in that case, maybe it it is very um very prudent to be thoughtful and make sure you're getting
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getting different points of view. Great. Thank thank you for clarifying that. That's that sounds really very very
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interesting. Uh the second trait that you talked about was that they are relentlessly reliable. Uh that explain
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what you why does that matter so much? So reliability um caused all sorts of debate on our research team. Uh mainly
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because it's um you know all of these behaviors seem pretty obvious. Reliability was you kind of annoyingly
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obvious, right? It was, you know, plain as milk toast and and it was, you know, we found ourselves resisting even
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putting it there out there because it was so basic. And yet reliability turned out to be have a very significant as a
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statistical significance for performance. And actually, of the four behaviors, reliability is the only one
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that's statistically associated with greater likelihood of getting hired. So,
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demonstrating reliability leads you to be more likely to get into the job uh as well as to perform well in it.
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How can leaders learn to be more reliable? Right? Great question and actually there I'll share an anecdote if
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I may. So uh in addition to the article because we've got you know great reception for the article lots of folks
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wanted you know found this really useful. So on our website uh ceogenome.com we actually have a self-
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assessment on these behaviors and so we had 4,000 folks of all walks of life curious enough to see how they stack up
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against CEOs and against the peer group. So they took the assessment and among those was, you know, one individual who
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is a founder and a CEO of a major major company, one of the most successful in his industry. He took the test and he
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called one of my partners that's been working with him and said, um, you know,
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this is great and you know, I've excelled on these following areas, but it looks like I need to improve on my
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reliability and let's get working at it. And so that caused a really good conversation because clearly even
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somebody who's been tremendously successful who is among the absolute best in his field had a really
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fundamental behavior that he felt he wanted to improve upon. Now also knowing that individual uh probably getting
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anything less than 100 would have been an insult to him. So he which much much like many of the Wharton graduates I'm
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sure. And so what reliability really comes down to and if you had to ask yourself, well geez, all of these sound
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great, but how do I actually learn? Um what what we think about when we think about reliability is really three
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things. Number one is the mindset. Number two is the people and number three is the kind of the processes and
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the cadence and the drum beat of the company. The good news is that really of these three things, there's only one
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that the CEO has to carry in his own brain, right? Uh, and that what we find with CEOs who are highly reliable is
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that they want to be counted on. It's not that they're willing to take responsibility when they see things kind
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of going off course or when they see an opportunities in front of them. They kind of almost have a desperate hunger
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to be counted on and actually pull things together. And interestingly, it shows up pretty early in life sometimes.
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So, you know, one example, I was uh assessing a CEO candidate for a board and he shared a story from when he was
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16 years old and he was living in California. His parents left him on the farm in California alone and a fire
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broke out as it happens in California. And so, I don't know if you remember yourself at 16, if you try to imagine
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the course of action you would take if you're kind of, you know, under a threat, right? A pretty physical threat.
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So, what he did is he led the horses out of the barn. Then he took care of the chickens and loaded them in the truck.
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And then he did a bunch of other things that were kind of aimed to minimize damage. Then he got into the pickup
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truck, drove away 100 miles, and then he called his parents. When I think about myself in that
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situation, I probably I I'm hoping back in 16 I would have had the presence to
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call 911 before my mom, but it would be a toss up, right? And so it's just one
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of those examples where this and you know that mindset of accountability and if you know if we ask ourselves think
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about kind of the most reliable people in your life they don't need to be brilliant leaders but we all know who
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they are and so that has to come from the CEO because that sets the tone for the whole organization. But for those of
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us who are disorganized and you know don't think of ourselves as terrific quote unquote
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managers there are a lot of other pieces of reliability that you don't need to do
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yourself as a CEO. And in fact, so those are the other two pieces. You've got to
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surround yourself with people that have complimentary skill sets and you got to let them do their job, right? Um you
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have to let them build the reliability into the company and be willing to kind of be part of that reliability. And then
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the rest of it is processes, routines, and the cadences. Um kind of a lot of reliable companies feel a little bit
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more like a marching jazz band, marching marching uh band, if you will, than you
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know uh um improvisation of talented musicians. What what did you learn about the connection between reliability and
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trust? That's a great great great question. Yes, the answer is absolutely. Uh trust is one of the reasons why
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reliability is so important in a leader and those two pieces go hand in hand. Yes, absolutely. Here's another
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reliability hack that actually anybody can use. So, if you were interested in uh improving your reliability, here's
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something that's really simple. What we also found when we looked at the CEOs up
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close and personal, the cos who are regarded and viewed as highly reliable is that they're masters at setting
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expectations. And so reliability doesn't start when you start executing. Reliability
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actually starts when you walk in and you understand what everybody expects of you
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and you align your stakeholders towards expectations that are realistic given what the situation presents you with.
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That that's a that's a great point. I'm very glad you mentioned that. So you
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have an opportunity to be to set the stage for reliability very very early in any undertaking you take on. So that
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actually leads to a very logical uh transition to the third attribute you found which is that uh people who are
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reliable also are great at managing relationships. In fact you call them masters at relationships. How does that
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factor into the success of CEOs? Absolutely. Well so being a CEO of being a leader of any kind is a team sport
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right? you're only a leader if you can get others to follow and you know bring
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the whole business or the whole uh initiative that you're leading to success, right? And so what we found
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that was really interesting is how successful CEOs relate if you will um was was there was actually really
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something special in it and what they do kind of the best analogy that I can offer is that of an orchestra conductor.
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Um, and what I'm told, so I'm not a musician myself, but what I'm told is
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that a good orchestra conductor, number one, they obviously understand the score. They understand the intention and
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they have a point of view and a vision for how they want to interpret the music. Number two, they really have a
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keen understanding of the musical instruments and the participants in the orchestra both in terms of what their
00:18:09
role is in that score and performing that to life, bringing that to life and also what motivates them, you know, how
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you know they will know that the first vi violin had that you know her cat died that day and so while it may sound you
00:18:23
know light-hearted, it's actually a really big deal for her. And so they're
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really tuned in to the vision of what they're trying to bring to life and they're really tuned in to each
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individual who is sitting around there and creating the music. And then when all of that comes together, the good
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conductor, all of his engagement with the um with the instruments, with his performers, with his musicians, who
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often may be more talented musicians than he or she is, is really all in service of that vision. It's all in
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service of producing a piece of music that nobody in that room individually could have produced on their own. And so
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that's what we call relate for impact. So it's easy to describe what it's not.
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What it's not is it's not relating for affinity, meaning I'm here to be liked.
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I'm here to be beloved by the musician or by the audience because that's much
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easier actually. It's also not I'm not here to, you know, hammer and beat beat
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the living hell out of my out of my musicians because I know they won't perform the best piece of music. And so
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CEOs who are successful at engaging for impact always hold in mind kind of the purpose of what they're here for and
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tune in to their stakeholders to deliver that purpose. How do they manage that balance though between those two
00:19:36
extremes that you just described? You know, it's it's a really great question. So I think it's for some it's
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comes more naturally than for others. I find that they are um they do two things
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particularly well when for folks kind of that always work at it right is one again it's back to clarity of purpose
00:19:55
and clarity of intent. Uh and it doesn't need to be purpose with a big P right
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there's a lot of dialogue around kind of the high-minded purpose. The purpose
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could be as simple as you know in this business relationship here's what our
00:20:05
intent is but they're really clear about what that is. And number two is they're
00:20:08
voracious feedback consumers. So, they're constantly watching to see the feedback that the audience gives them,
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the feedback that they get from their musicians, and they're constantly evolving and responding. Um, one of the
00:20:18
CEOs that that we've worked with, uh, Tom Monahan. Tom, uh, led successfully a
00:20:23
company called Corporate Executive Board, grew to a billion dollars and recently sold it to Gardner. And Tom had
00:20:29
a great way to frame a job of a CEO. And he said, "Look, you know, I've got three
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groups of stakeholders, uh, my shareholders, my customers, and my employees. And if I were to really fully satisfy
00:20:41
either one of them, we'd be bankrupt. And so as a CEO, my job is to keep them
00:20:46
all constructively dissatisfied in the name of making the enterprise successful so that the enterprise can deliver to
00:20:52
them all. What does he mean by constructively dissatisfied? Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Yeah. So I found that
00:20:58
fascinating kind of how he framed it that he didn't say my job is to satisfy
00:21:01
all of them. my job is to keep them all constructively dissatisfied so I can bring the whole enterprise forward
00:21:06
successfully and then deliver for all of them right and I think it's really that
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it's that he's not thinking or successful CEO is not thinking about how do I please my audience they truly think
00:21:17
about how do I take whatever the cause may be and again you don't need to be
00:21:20
CEO the cause could be having a good family or cause could be you know in this particular initiative that you're
00:21:26
given and how do I bring everybody forward towards that cause even if at times they're not going to be happy with
00:21:31
what it feels like dayto-day So I'm I'm glad you mentioned that because I want
00:21:34
to come back to that after we talk about the fourth attribute and that is uh they
00:21:39
are fast learners right they adapt very quickly to changing circumstances why why and
00:21:46
how is that uh important so I think if there's any behavior that is growing in its importance and is
00:21:55
getting the kind of the most air time if you will in the boardroom these days it's this
00:22:00
adaptability you know you write a lot about innovation knowledge at Bordon has a lot of kind of uh knowledge in that
00:22:06
area. I don't know a single board of a company or a single set of investors that aren't talking about how the world
00:22:12
is speeding up, how there's a greater degree of uncertainty in the world and
00:22:16
how important it is in that uncertainty environment and environment of change and constant surprises, right? You don't
00:22:23
have to kind of go too far for those to be able to still position the business for success and to remain vibrant and
00:22:29
and viable. So adaptability is on the rise as a as a key CEO behavior. Now you you did the study over a really long
00:22:37
period of time. Uh and I'm sure it was pretty global in its in its character.
00:22:42
Uh were there any cultural factors that that played into the way in which these behaviors played out? So Mul yes so we
00:22:50
would love to do kind of additional explorations of that factor and we're still the research is still developing.
00:22:57
uh 15% of our data set are CEOs of companies that are not US companies. A greater percentage of the data are CEOs
00:23:03
who are not US-born CEOs. And so uh there's certainly representation and I think we have an opportunity to um to
00:23:11
dig into it deeper and uh and explore it further. Well, I was the specific point
00:23:16
that I was thinking about is I wonder if your data showed whether some cultures are more relationship oriented and
00:23:24
others are more contraoriented. Absolutely. Because I see that conflict in in in
00:23:30
uh leadership roles all the time where some some some people will change a contract if it preserves a key
00:23:36
relationship whereas others will let a relationship go if it doesn't stick to
00:23:42
the contract. Exactly. Uh h how did you navigate this divide? Mul I think that's
00:23:47
a brilliant brilliant call out. Yes. So if I had a hypothesis, right, I would say that these behaviors hold across
00:23:53
cultures, but what great looks like will probably be very cultural. So I'll give
00:23:58
you one example that's very simple and close to home. So in uh 1998, I was uh
00:24:03
graduate I was um between my first and second year at Wharton and I went to do half of my internship was at BCG in
00:24:09
London and the other half was going to be in Russia working for a private equity fund. And I was very conscious
00:24:14
that when I go to Russia, I shouldn't be smiling too much because in Russia,
00:24:18
people smile for two reasons. They're either flirting or something is funny or
00:24:21
if not, then you're an idiot basically. Whereas in the US, the social message
00:24:25
you're conveying conveying by smiling is just that I'm okay, you're okay. We're
00:24:29
enjoying our conversation and we're trustworthy partners, right? It's part
00:24:32
of social lubricant, if you will. And so this is a very trivial example, but just
00:24:36
goes to to your broader point around what great looks like could be very cultural. Also the value that a culture
00:24:42
places on a behavior um will be really different. I think in our culture we really uh adaptability again is a
00:24:48
behavior that we really value. We're a country of you know many of us are first
00:24:51
generation immigrants or if not have immigrant roots right it's adapt or die
00:24:56
often in that case right but in more established place um uh countries or countries that have kind of roots with a
00:25:02
more established population reliability might be that much more important um so I think this is actually definitely uh a
00:25:09
very fertile area for further exploration uh just the last couple of questions u
00:25:15
so you worked on this uh uh CEO genome study for a decade or more. Uh, of all the leaders that you encountered,
00:25:25
did any one person sort of stick in your mind as the sort of the the top person?
00:25:32
Oh gosh. Uh I I know it may be hard to identify just one, but if I were to ask you, you know, just sort of push you a
00:25:41
little bit and say, tell me who who who struck you most deeply as as the most impressive leader you encountered, who
00:25:49
who embodied some of the things that you found in your study. Who would that be and why? Gosh, you know, it's a it it's
00:25:57
a good question. I tend to think of it almost by behavior. So as we're developing so a lot of this research
00:26:03
will feed into a book that we'll have coming out next year and so uh you know
00:26:08
first part of the book is all about these behaviors and every behavior we kind of we think of a handful of CEOs
00:26:13
and we pushed ourselves to say okay well the data is nice but who really embodies
00:26:17
that behavior and so in each individual behavior we have kind of our masters or our black belts if you will of these
00:26:26
different behaviors at the same time I'll tell you you know I've been very
00:26:28
fortunate I feel blessed blessed to have had an opportunity to be around several
00:26:33
CEOs that I really admire and that have been very very successful and I'll tell
00:26:37
you none of them are equally good at any of these four at all of these four right
00:26:42
and and each of them will will be able to really shine on probably a couple of them so that's what we're finding in the
00:26:47
data is that um having strength in two is typically seems to be the sweet spot and then having awareness around the
00:26:54
others uh I can talk about a CEO here in town actually that's somebody that uh
00:26:59
you you and your audience may know very well. So Maline Bell has been leading CHOP, right? Uh and Meline so I think
00:27:06
what's you know special about her among many other things uh we often it's very
00:27:10
easy to think when you look at these behaviors some things seem on the face of it very mutually exclusive or
00:27:16
contradictory to each other. Well gee if I'm really decisive and I'm really fast
00:27:20
to move how am I also relating for impact? Or if I'm really decisive how am I also adaptable for example? or if I'm
00:27:28
really adaptable, how am I also reliable? Um, and so I'm always curious about leaders who seem to combine
00:27:34
behaviors that on the face of it seem to be hard to combine. And so if you talk to folks around Meline, um, what you'll
00:27:41
hear is that she's somebody though who really stands out for her ability to relate for impact uh, and really build
00:27:47
trust and in the multitude of stakeholders. uh and at the same time somebody who's very decisive and
00:27:53
obviously reliability is a core fundamental organizational capability for CHOP, right? Because they're saving
00:27:59
kids lives every day and so reliability is really essential. Um I will tell you actually something that I do while I I'm
00:28:05
I'm struggling to come up with one CEO that's a master of all four because I
00:28:10
think we're all masters of different things. I can tell you one behavior that
00:28:14
if you were to really raise your game on across all four behaviors, one simple thing you can do that will help you on
00:28:21
all four. Okay, that'd be useful of course. And so if you look at kind of the underlying muscle building, right,
00:28:28
and how do you raise your game at all four? I think the biggest fertile area for that is mistakes.
00:28:36
We're so used in business and look even our research, right? What are we talking
00:28:39
about? We're talking about who are the most successful CEOs and what comes to
00:28:42
mind is, you know, Olympic list of accomplishments. The reality is the most successful CEOs that are really strong
00:28:48
at these behaviors are fantastic at mining their mistakes for learnings for themselves and for the organization. And
00:28:55
so if I had to think about kind of a underutilized asset in business, it's mistakes and really digging into them
00:29:02
and and figuring out well how do I become more reliable? Right? Another point in reliability that's interesting.
00:29:07
every organization I know where reliability is a matter of life or death right so we can talk about reliability
00:29:13
chop it's a matter of life or death if you're in the Navy Seals it's a matter
00:29:17
of life or death all these organizations are obsessive about mistakes there's a
00:29:21
cult of actually finding these mistakes so Maline chop introduced a program called great catch as a way to celebrate
00:29:28
people and and encourage them and open the doors to the fact that mistake is not an indictment of perfectionism right
00:29:34
because excellent organizations often struggle with mistake because we expect ourselves to be so
00:29:39
perfect, right? And so she found a very kind of light-hearted in some ways but really really profound way to say great
00:29:46
catch. It's all of our jobs to it's a job of all of us to find mistakes. And
00:29:50
so I would kind of encourage all of us to go on a you know personal great catch program if you will because I think
00:29:57
that's a route to improving your behavior on every one of them. That's that's that's wonderful. Thank you. And
00:30:02
then I have just sort of one last question that echoes something you brought up earlier which
00:30:07
is how would the principles that you have learned be applicable to leaders who are not CEOs uh people at every
00:30:15
level of society who just want to be better leaders in their own sphere whether it's a high school teacher or a
00:30:22
high school principal or you know a leader of a nonprofit uh at every level where leadership plays
00:30:30
a role. How could some of your findings be relevant to them? You know, this is probably one thing that makes me most
00:30:36
excited about our research. So, it's exciting to dispel the myths about CEOs
00:30:40
and help boards be better at picking the right CEOs. It's really exciting to see
00:30:44
that it can actually change lives for the better. No matter what you do to your point, whether you happen to be a
00:30:48
principal or if you just want to have a good family. Um, and what we found is that um, number one, it's never too
00:30:55
early or too late to apply these behaviors, right? As I've shared with you earlier, we have examples of
00:31:01
struggles and examples of real victories at any stage in one's career, whether
00:31:04
you're really successful CEO or you're just a kid graduating from high school
00:31:08
or anything in between. Um, and we've also found tremendous amount of feedback
00:31:14
actually I've gotten since the article came out about how much these behaviors
00:31:17
have helped individuals just in their daily lives. Um, and so we're really encouraged by that. Great. Lena, thank
00:31:23
you so much for speaking with Knowledge at Wharton today. Thank you for having me.
00:31:30
For more insight from knowledge at Wharton, please visit knowledge.warton.upen.edu.
00:31:35
[Music]

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Episode Highlights

  • Elena Litkinabotello on Leadership
    Elena shares her journey into leadership and the importance of helping others succeed.
    “I realized that what I love doing is helping people be successful.”
    @ 00m 43s
    May 26, 2017
  • The CEO Genome Project
    Elena discusses the findings of the CEO Genome Project and what drives CEO performance.
    “What really matters is what you do with what you're given.”
    @ 06m 49s
    May 26, 2017
  • The Importance of Reliability
    Elena highlights reliability as a key trait for successful CEOs and its impact on hiring.
    “Reliability turned out to be annoyingly obvious, yet significant.”
    @ 11m 51s
    May 26, 2017
  • Constructively Dissatisfied Leadership
    A CEO explains the balance of keeping stakeholders constructively dissatisfied for success.
    “"My job is to keep them all constructively dissatisfied."”
    @ 20m 46s
    May 26, 2017
  • The Value of Mistakes
    Exploring how successful CEOs mine their mistakes for learnings.
    “"Mistakes are an underutilized asset in business."”
    @ 28m 59s
    May 26, 2017

Episode Quotes

  • The only perfect CEOs I know are the ones I don’t know.
    Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others
  • What really matters is what you do with what you're given.
    Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others
  • Reliability turned out to be annoyingly obvious, yet significant.
    Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others
  • Reliability starts when you understand what everybody expects of you.
    Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others
  • "My job is to keep them all constructively dissatisfied.".
    Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others
  • "Mistakes are an underutilized asset in business.".
    Why Some CEOs Perform Better Than Others

Key Moments

  • Elena's Epiphany00:43
  • CEO Genome Insights01:57
  • Reliability Matters11:31
  • Relate for Impact18:57
  • Clarity of Purpose19:53
  • Adaptability Rising22:31
  • Cultural Factors22:50
  • Learning from Mistakes28:33

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