Tips from the Top

Never has it been more important for business leaders to understand how to improve performance. With the economy tightening, global competition escalating and shareholder demands increasing, Chief Executives have never been more under pressure. With this in mind, 3i has interviewed over 100 highly successful CEOs and managing directors to find out what it is that they do and have done to transform the performance of their companies.

These competency-based interviews were conducted as part of the activities of the 3i People Programmes through which 3i seeks to build relationships with leading CEOs as well as chairmen, NEDs and CFOs. This  report summarises the findings of this research.

The following are some of the key highlights to emerge from 3i’s ground-breaking research into what CEOs do to enhance the performance of the companies in their charge:

• The most successful CEOs are clearly growth-oriented, spending almost two-thirds of their time developing the business rather than cutting cost
• Upgrading the product/service offering seems to be the most profitable area of activity, followed by improving people management in the business and enhancing operational efficiency
• Efforts at developing new markets have been almost twice as rewarding as those targeted at existing customers
• To improve employee performance, CEOs favour the use of individual measurement and reward schemes more than anything else
• When changing people, most CEOs focus on their management team rather than the workforce, with the Sales & Marketing function being the most vulnerable
  64% of those surveyed were able to improve the financial management of the organisation in at least one key respect
• One-in-three CEOs cited the acquisition and disposal route as being a significant means of improving performance.