What Are The Five Skills You Need To Be A Great CEO?
We all want to know the secrets to being a great CEO. So wouldn’t it be great if we actually were able to compare two CEOs in the exact same industry to see why one was better than the other?
I was really fortunate to work with two CEOs in the same industry, so I got to see the differences up close. One of the CEOs was a great leader, and the other CEO was not a great leader.
The two CEOs were very similar in many ways. They were of the same generation. They both grew up poor/lower middle class.
They both had sizable egos. And they both enjoyed some of level of success.
However, one of the CEOs, the late Jack Gifford, built his company (Maxim Integrated Products) to over $2B/year in revenue. The other CEO (we will call him “Bob”) wanted to build a $1B/year company, but his company was stuck for years with revenue of around $200M/year.
Eventually, activist investors forced Bob to sell his company. Bob had missed too many plans for too long, and Bob lost the support of his board of directors.
Why was Gifford so successful as a leader and Bob not so successful?
As I said, Gifford and Bob were similar in many ways. However, Gifford and Bob were different in some…
