How to become a CEO

Do you want to become a CEO? Are you aspiring to go to the top in your career? Naturally you should know the challenges involved, the mindset required and the nature of risks. Here is a book where you can directly here answers from top 200 chief executives across the world. Steve Tappin and Andrew Cave interviewed the CEOs across the world and presented their secrets in this book – The new secrets of CEOs. The interviewed CEOs are from major global companies like Google, Microsoft, GE, Cisco, Dell from US or Tesco, BT group, WPP group from Europe or Tatas, Infosys, ICICI Bank from India or Haier, Alibaba, Severstal from China and Russia, a broad section of companies in diverse areas.

The authors have done excellent analysis from the data collected during these interviews and presented them in a very organized and useful manner. This book is a new addition of the earlier one in 2008, which covered inputs from interviews of 150 CEOs.

The first challenge is winning in the reset – reset implies working in different ways after the 2007-09 financial crisis across the world. Steve Tappin and Anrew Cave discusses the feedback and lessons learnt from various CEOs on this topic. Some of the lessons include – focus on the organic growth, making the structure more flexible, Organizational speed an obsessive focus on talent development.

• Hard globalization
• Environmental challenges
• Promise of Web 3.0
• Extreme cycles of capitalism
• War for Talent

With balances changing, it is extremely important to handle these realities and win the competition. It is believed that emerging market economies will account for 70 per cent of global GDP growth in the coming decade. At the same time, there are risks involved in operating in emerging markets. You can gain great insight and knowledge from various top executives talking about these challenges.

In part II, the basic questions about CEOs are answered.

• How do top CEOs run their businesses?
• Where have they come from?
• What motivates them?

During the introduction to this part, authors summarize their findings (a) The present generation CEOs are professional, handle risks well and avoid personal publicity (b) They are for radical changes and rapid growth (c) Based on the operating style, the present CEOs can be placed into five distinct categories.

The rest of this part deals with vast information from each of these categories of top managers, bringing out various criteria such as their focus, measure of success, strengths, risk handling etc.

Part III deals with the future. This part includes CEO’s secrets on organizing future businesses, CEO’s guidance to prospective young people about how to get to the top, how to develop the required skills and further tips.

Finally about the health warning, working at the top is not easy and poses a serious health warning. Here are inputs from the top on maintaining the physical and emotional health and balancing work and home.

The book end with an epilogue – why not you?, provoking you to take up the challenge.

Whether you are an aspiring to become a CEO or want to go high in your career, or you are just curious about how the top executives work, this book - 'The secrets of CEOs' is very helpful and insightful.

Going back to the beginning of the book, the thought provoking foreword by Sir Richard Branson of Virgin adds value to the book and he also questions you – why not you?

This book is published by Nicholas Brealey publishing.