The Definitive Guide to CEO Success

Looking beyond the bottom line

'Tis the season for waiting in long checkout lines, hoping Amazon delivers on time, and—if you're a CEO—reflecting on whether you truly succeeded in 2024.

That last one? It’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. A quick Google search for “CEO success metrics” will give you the usual suspects: revenue growth, profit margins, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and other operational KPIs. All important, yes—but they only tell part of the story.

Those metrics matter and should absolutely be tracked. But they miss the subtler, more meaningful signs of your leadership impact—the ones that show whether you’re truly guiding the ship through the fog.

Without further ado, here’s my definitive guide to knowing if you’ve been a successful CEO this year:

Other Companies Are Poaching Your People.
Having your top talent recruited by competitors can be frustrating, but it’s also a compliment. It shows you’ve built a team worth noticing. The real concern arises when no one is headhunting your emp…