A Survey of How 1,000 CEOs Spend Their Day - Harvard Business Review

A Survey of How 1,000 CEOs Spend Their Day Reveals What Makes Leaders Successful.

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A survey on the subject above was conducted by Harvard Business Review(HBR) recently, and it will surprise you of the findings revealed in the survey.

Read the report from hbr.org below:

What makes a CEO effective? The question has been studied extensively, of course, including in HBR. Yet we still know fairly little about how CEOs behave day-to-day and how their behavior relates to the success or failure of the companies they run. Previous studies have typically had limitations. Some have been of small samples, or relied heavily on the researchers’ interpretation to classify different “types” of executive.

In new research, we use survey data from over 1,000 CEOs across six countries and the financial performance of their companies to explore these questions. And our evidence suggests that hands-on managerial CEOs are, on average, less effective than leaders who stay more high-level.

Our data set includes every activity a CEO undertakes in a week, as well as whether it was planned ahead of time and who else was involved. We used machine learning to determine which differences in CEO behavior are most important. In effect, we asked the algorithm: If you had to explain CEO behavior by dividing them into two types, how would you do it?

Although the algorithm is completely agnostic, the classification it generates closely resembles John Kotter’s distinction between “managers” and “leaders.” The first type of behavior — managers — includes relatively more plant visits, interactions with employees in supply chain management, and meetings with clients and suppliers. The other type — leaders — includes relatively more interactions with C-suite executives, personal and virtual communications and planning, and meetings with a wide variety of internal functions and external stakeholders. Our data doesn’t insist on classifying CEOs strictly as one type. Instead, we use an index that classifies each CEO as a mix of the two types.

What Do CEOs Do All Day?

On average, about one-quarter of CEOs’ days are spent alone, including sending emails. Another 10% is spent on personal matters, and 8% is spent traveling. The remainder (56%) is spent with at least one other person, which mostly involves meetings, most of which are planned ahead of time. About one-third of the time CEOs spend with others is one-on-one; two-thirds is with more than one other person. (This data includes a CEO’s entire workday, not just time in the office.)

The most common departments for CEOs to meet with are production (35% of time spent with others), marketing (22%), and finance (17%). The most common meetings with outside functions are clients (10%) and suppliers (7%).

But CEOs vary considerably on each of these, and our model divides CEO behavior into the two groups mentioned above — leaders and managers — and then scores each CEO as being degrees of each.

Complete the story here: hbr.org

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