Martin Sorrell earned an MBA and spent a decade in the ad industry before buying a stake in a shell company and building WPP-now the world’s largest marketing-services firm-through a series of acquisitions. Consider the three men at the top of the ranking: Lars Rebien Sørensen studied forestry before he joined Novo Nordisk more than 30 years ago and climbed through various operational roles to become CEO. But as the variety of the people on the list shows, there is no single path to success. This group has delivered impressive results, producing an overall financial return of 2,091%, on average. It’s based on performance on both financial and ESG measures over leaders’ entire time in office-which comes to 17 years, on average, for the CEOs on the 2016 list. HBR’s ranking of the world’s 100 best CEOs is intended to highlight these individuals. Is it any wonder so many CEOs focus on the short term?Īgainst this backdrop, it’s heartening to see some top executives implement long-term strategies and establish lasting track records. These forces help explain why the C-suite sometimes appears to have a revolving door. Around the world, economic growth is slow, political uncertainty undermines attempts to develop long-term plans, and shareholder activists have become powerful critics of business leaders. In one illustration of that, although he and his wife have kept the family home in Philadelphia, he moved into a house in Heidelberg to demonstrate to his employees that being a part of the German culture is important to him.
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“You have to care about what the culture needs instead of just focusing on your agenda and how to get it done.” “Leading in any country is all about reading the room, respecting the culture, and understanding the nuances of how people perceive information,” he writes. He viewed the company’s belief that it could simply transfer its strategies for the German market to the U.S. In 2002 SAP hired McDermott to head its North American business, which was struggling. His experience there helped him later in his career, when he had to manage people across a variety of cultures. He learned a few important phrases in Spanish so that he could relate to his new team. Because he didn’t know the culture or the market, he arrived without an agenda and just listened to people for two weeks. The company sent him to Puerto Rico to turn around its failing business there.
The author’s first overseas business assignment came when he was 29 and a sales manager at Xerox, running a team in New York City.
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