The CEO Next Door /

NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER Winner of CMI Management Book of the Year 2019Based on an in-depth analysis of over 2,600 leaders drawn from a database of more than 17,000 CEOs and C-suite executives, as well 13,000 hours of interviews, and two decades of experience advising CEOs and executive boards, Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell overturn the myths about what it takes to get to the top and succeed. Their groundbreaking research was the featured cover story in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. It reveals the common attributes and counterintuitive choices that set apart successful CEOs-lessons that we can apply to our own careers. Much of what we hear about who gets to the top, and how, is wrong. Those who become chief executives set their sights on the C-suite at an early age. In fact, over 70 percent of the CEOs didnt have designs on the corner office until later in their careers. You must graduate from an elite college. In fact, only 7 percent of CEOs in the dataset are Ivy League graduates--and 8 percent didnt graduate from college at all. To become a CEO you need a flawless rsum. The reality: 45 percent of CEO candidates had at least one major career blowup.