CEO Benchmarking Report 2019 – The Predictive Index

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The Predictive Index’s Annual CEO Benchmarking Report 2019 discovered the patterns of exceptional CEOs and explored their inner thoughts and weaknesses by analysing survey data from 156 CEOs and business leaders.

Main findings from this report include:

  • Strategy development and talent strategy were ranked as the most important priorities of CEOs while predicting market trends and competitor analysis were ranked as least important.
  • When asked to identify their top 3 challenges as CEOs, most of them selected “finding the right talent” as the most challenging matter, followed by “building better operational processes” and “aligning employees with organizational strategy”. Among the top 5 most challenging matters, 4 of them are talent optimization related.
  • Employee-related expenses account for 55% of total business costs on average. “Leadership development”, “Employee performance” and “pre-hire selection” are fields that CEOs believed they would most likely require assistance. All of these are talent optimization activities.
  • When more than half of CEOs claimed that they didn’t reach their 2018 goals, only 37% of them stated to have achieved the goals 100%.
  • The top 3 concerns for CEOs were cited as employee performance and productivity, competitive pressures and hiring the right people, two of which are talent optimization related.
  • More than half of the high-performing CEOs believed they had the tools that can accurately assess if they’ve got the right people doing the right jobs. On the other hand, almost half the not-yet-excellent CEOs relied on gut feel to decide whether they have the right people.
  • Evidently, there was an obvious link between organization objective achievement and high Glassdoor rating. Organizations reported having reached their goals tend to have higher Glassdoor scores.
  • A majority of CEOs admitted that they required assistance extensively or could have used some help with developing and implementing business strategy and talent strategy over the past 5 years. When dealing with talent strategy and implementation, high-performing CEOs were more likely to invest in new software or systems while other CEOs tend to hire an HR consultant to assist their business.
  • “Holding people accountable”, “getting rid of under-performers” and “staying focused” were rated as the top weaknesses of CEOs as business leaders. It was revealed from the survey that CEOs cared most about building a lasting company and increasing personal wealth was not their goal at all.
  • Although most CEOs thought positively about their employees, they tend to not share these thoughts with their staff. CEOs were relatively confident about the effectiveness of their leadership when 78% of them rated themselves 8 or above.
  • Nearly half of the CEOs earn a base income of $150k or more annually and most of them can potentially earn an extra annual income. 78% of CEOs worked at least 41 hours a week. Only 29% of them get to sleep 8 hours or more per night. Half of them could take up to 15 vacation days each year.
  • Sporting activities, personal hobbies and watching TV were the most popular things for CEOs to do outside of work. 79% of them read at least 5 books or more in 2018 and nonfiction books were a more common choice for them.
  • Only 40% of CEOs believed that Luck is an attribute to success while the rest of them regarded natural ability and hard work are more important to be a successful CEO.

Full report here.