Modern leadership faces an environment that is rapidly growing in complexity, dealing with about twice as many issues on a CEO’s desk compared to five to seven years ago. This pressure led senior partners Kurt Strovink and Carolyn Dewar, co-leaders of McKinsey & Company’s CEO Practice—the firm’s top CEO mentors—to empirically study the world’s top 200 corporate executives.
His new book, A CEO for All Seasons, details the mindsets and methods needed to succeed in a role for which 68% of current CEOs admitted they felt “ill-prepared” when taking on. Research conducted by Strovink, Dewar and co-authors Scott Keller and Vikram Malhotra revealed that these elite leaders possess unique habits for challenging complacency, promoting brutal candor and maintaining enough humility to continue learning.
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The high-performing leaders studied in the book stand out for a constant “mindset of curiosity and learning,” something that came across “in almost every interview,” Dewar told Fortune.
Top leaders are the first to admit they don’t know everything, Strovink told Fortune. “It’s not that they were superhuman. It’s that they learned faster, were more adaptable and had structures… institutionalized methods to neutralize their excesses and capitalize on their strengths.”
One of the most striking guidelines for a high-performance culture came from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. According to Strovink, Dimon tells his teams: “Don’t bring your best version, bring your worst version — put the issues on the table.”
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Dewar added that this is not intended to encourage bad behavior, but rather to promote organizational openness. It means being “willing to share when things aren’t going well… so we can fix them.”
Strovink added that this level of discomfort is necessary because great leaders must create conditions for “extreme thinking, openness, and building trust over time…they bring it into the room, put it on the table, and do it authentically.”
He said good leaders need to find a way to have difficult conversations — that might not happen with another leader — “but without making them traumatic and brutalizing experiences.”
The challenges of modern leadership
Strovink explained that advising CEOs, although it has been a central part of McKinsey’s mission for almost 100 years, has taken on a new level with the CEO Practice, founded a few years ago. This shows, in part, “that the role of the CEO is becoming increasingly important.”
According to him, we live in an era “where people criticize leadership and say it’s a bad thing and that no one wants to be led. But in reality, if you are led by someone who is enlightened and effective, it is a glorious thing — especially relevant to this generation, perhaps more than ever.”
Dewar turned to data, arguing that established rules and practice are vital now because being CEO is, frankly, difficult.
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She cited reports (some published by Fortune) about CEO tenures being shortened, “but it’s actually quite bifurcated.”
She explained that 30% of CEOs don’t make it past the first three years, and that the chances of a long tenure increase significantly after that period.
According to her, the private equity sector watches this closely, considering the cost of frequent CEO changes: “We don’t want turnover.”
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Dewar cited estimates that in the S&P 500, $1 trillion in value is lost annually due to unsuccessful leadership transitions.
Strovink added that the research quantified what constitutes good leadership: “The top-quintile CEOs we studied create, over time, far superior value for their companies, the economy and the world.”
McKinsey estimates that the top quintile generates 30 times more profit than the next three quintiles combined. Leadership — and CEO talent — is “unequally distributed,” he said.
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Jim Rossman, global head of shareholder advisory at Barclays, has been following for decades the movement of funds that put pressure on listed companies — including when they demand a change of CEOs.
In October, he found that CEO replacements due to these pressures could hit a record high in 2025, surpassing 2024. He told Fortune that this makes the CEO role more fragile than ever.
“It appears that activists have imposed private equity standards on public company executives,” he said — viewing the CEO “more as an operator, and not just someone who rose through the ranks.”
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They began to impose on executives the strict standards of private equity funds: quarterly performance, maximum focus on efficiency and value. This contrasts with the historical view of the CEO as a “local hero” or revered figure.
Activists realized that they didn’t need to take companies private to exercise control — they just needed to buy a stake and put pressure on the board.
Rossman pointed out that this operational pressure is intensified by technology, which provides instant data on comparative performance, and by shareholder consolidation in large funds, facilitating coordination between major shareholders.
As a result, boards — now with a mindset more similar to private equity — are more attentive to their reputation and are quicker to replace leaders deemed insufficient.
Dewar agreed, noting that, “if you consider how much of the economy is moving to private or private equity-controlled companies, the turnover is much higher.”
She said she was told by a private equity advisor that 71% turnover is the standard. That’s the reason she’s passionate about the CEO Practice, she said: “How do we actually help CEOs and boards navigate these phases successfully?”
The power of openness and discomfort
To survive in this high-risk environment, McKinsey found that the best CEOs are adaptable, not necessarily ruthless. They win by embracing a “learning and curiosity mindset” and structuring discomfort internally.
Strovink and Dewar once again cited Dimon, who combats complacency by remembering that every large organization tends to “rest” — and it is up to the CEO to “constantly catalyze and push.” The “sociology of large organizations” makes everything incremental if the leader relaxes.
This internal discomfort is the necessary counterbalance to external pressure. Michael Dell illustrates this, Dewar said: He forced his team to imagine a competitor that could better serve its customers — encouraging the company to “challenge itself.” (She recalled that Dell has been doing this since she was 19.)
Dewar also mentioned how Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, described in another book (CEO Excellence) the loneliness of the position, caused by an “asymmetry of information” — he literally cannot share what he knows with many colleagues.
“No one above or below him sees everything he sees,” she said. Therefore, he considers it essential that CEOs have trusted advisors — a support network.
Ultimately, the book suggests that the most successful leaders in this fast-paced, private equity-shaped era are those able to navigate the central duality of the role: making bold decisions with incomplete information while maintaining humility and constant learning under constant demand for results.
The authors highlight that the objective is to show the “development of leaders over time”, including the final stage of a CEO, who prepares the next generation.
Brad Smith, former CEO of Intuit, was cited as an extraordinary example: he discussed succession with the board 44 times over 11 years — every quarter.
Smith is proud to have helped many people who worked with him become CEOs at other companies — being an “engine of leadership development.”
Strovink said one of the most surprising findings was that in this group of 200 leaders there was no famous “second-term decline.” “At least in this group, they didn’t have a slump. They continued to improve over time.”
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