Greg Stevenson says many senior executives wait passively for the CEO role, assuming loyalty and performance will earn it. They're shocked when companies hire from outside or say internal candidates aren't ready. The ones who become CEO actively position themselves instead of waiting.
Most executives who want the CEO role think about it in the wrong way. They think about it as something that will be given to them, a reward for consistent performance, loyalty, and hitting the numbers year after year. They wait, they deliver, they trust that somewhere above them the right people are noticing. And sometimes that works, but more often it doesn't. And the executives who are most blindsided, most generally surprised when someone else gets the role, or when the search goes external, or when they're told they're not quite ready, are almost always the ones who are waiting rather than positioning.
