The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge for businesses and their CEOs: an abrupt dislocation of how employees work, how customers behave, how supply chains function, and even what constitutes business performance, according to the McKinsey & Co. report "The CEO Moment: Leadership for a New Era."
Confronting the moment, CEOs have shifted how they lead. The changes have great potential beyond this crisis.
The report explores four shifts in how CEOs are leading that are also better ways to lead a company:
- Unlocking bolder ("10x”) aspirations.
- Elevating their “to be” lists to the same levels as “to do” in their operating models.
- Fully embracing stakeholder capitalism.
- Harnessing the full power of their CEO peer networks.
If these shifts become permanent, according to the report, they could hold the potential to recalibrate organizations and how they operate, companies' performance potentials, and their relationships to critical constituents.