What Top CEOs Are Doing Differently in 2025

Have you ever wondered what separates the highest-performing CEOs from all the other CEOs out there in 2025? I can tell you: it’s not the thickness of their strategy decks or the precision of their five-year plans. It’s the speed of their thinking and the quality of their counsel.

While others are busy managing complexity, growth leaders are busy simplifying it. They operate with a different set of principles focused on agility, clarity, and perspective. You don’t have to copy their every move, but understanding how they think is a competitive advantage.

Here’s what I see the most effective leaders doing differently right now.

They Use AI to See Around Corners

Top CEOs aren’t learning to code; they’re learning to ask better questions. For them, AI isn’t a technology in the way most think of it. Rather, it’s a lens that can be used to spot patterns before their competitors do. They leverage predictive analytics to move from reactive decision-making to proactive strategy.

Instead of asking, “What did our customers buy last quarter?” they will use these tools to ask, “What signals suggest our customers’ needs will change next quarter?” This shift in approach allows them to anticipate market shifts, identify hidden revenue streams, and even allocate resources with far greater precision. They are using data not just to report on the past, but to begin to model the future.

They Know When to Hold ’em…and When to Fold

Decisiveness isn’t just about making the tough calls; it’s about making them quickly and without emotion. The best leaders are masters of capital allocation and, more importantly, brutally honest about killing initiatives that are no longer serving the mission, regardless of sunk costs.

Where average performers will regularly remain committed to a failing project just to save face, top performers view it as a strategic necessity to cut losses and redeploy resources to winning initiatives. Rather than seeing it as a sign of failure, it’s undertood as the ultimate display of strategic discipline. They understand that every dollar and hour spent on a flawed strategy is stolen from a future success.

They Never Make a Critical Decision Alone

The most successful leaders I know have one rule for high-stakes decisions: never make them in an echo chamber. They have systematically built a confidential sounding board — a personal “board of directors” — to pressure-test their logic and expose their blind spots.

Beyond validation, this is about seeking truth. In a peer advisory setting like VISTAGE, leaders can present their raw, unfiltered challenges to a group of non-competitive executives who have faced similar battles. This process de-risks major decisions on everything from acquisitions to key hires and ensures that strategy is forged in clarity, not isolation.

They Systematically Make Themselves Redundant

The ultimate goal of a great CEO is not to be the most important person in the daily operations, but to build a business that can thrive without them in the weeds. Top leaders work relentlessly to remove themselves from the day-to-day workflow.

They do this by empowering their leadership team, installing robust operating systems, and focusing their own energy on the only three things a CEO can truly own:

1. Setting and holding the vision.
2. Allocating capital and people against that vision.
3. Building a culture that can deliver on it.

This is the final stage of scaling. It’s what allows them to work on the business, not just in it. It propels them to the best possible business exits.

Closing Thoughts

These four behaviors are outcomes of a specific mindset rooted in intellectual honesty, strategic humility, and a relentless focus on the future.

If you’re ready to shift your thinking and lead with more clarity and impact, the first step is to find the right sounding board. Let’s talk about what that could look like for you.

Schedule a complimentary, confidential consultation with me today, and let’s explore what’s possible.

Frequently Asked Questions: What Top CEOs are Doing Differently

Q: How does the “sunk cost fallacy” impact a CEO’s business decisions?

A: The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias that causes a CEO to continue investing in a failing project simply because they’ve already invested significant resources (time, money, or personnel). It emotionally tethers them to a past decision, making it difficult to objectively evaluate the project’s future potential. This bias can lead to disastrous outcomes, such as draining capital that could be used on promising new initiatives and burning out top talent on a project that is destined to fail. Overcoming it requires a ton of disciplined, data-driven leadership.

Q: What is the difference between a peer advisory group and a board of directors?

A: A board of directors has a formal, fiduciary duty to the company and its shareholders. They are focused on governance, oversight, and holding the CEO accountable for performance. In contrast, a peer advisory group (like Vistage) has a duty only to the CEO as an individual. It is a confidential, non-competitive space where a leader can be completely transparent about their most difficult challenges—both professional and personal—without fear of judgment or consequence. The board manages the company; the peer group supports the leader.

Q: What is the first practical step for a CEO to start working “on” the business?

A: I think that the first practical step is to perform a time audit and delegate one significant operational task. For one week, the CEO should track every activity. Then, they must identify a recurring, operational task that someone on their leadership team could own 80% as well as them. The CEO’s job is to then provide that person with the resources and authority to take it over completely. This single act of delegation frees up crucial time and mental space, creating the initial momentum needed to shift from an operational to a strategic focus.

Q: For a CEO who isn’t a tech expert, what’s a simple way to start using AI for strategy?

A: Start by focusing on questions, not technology. Begin by asking your data or analytics team one predictive question per week. Instead of asking “What were our sales last month?” (historical), ask “Based on current trends, what customer segment is most likely to churn in the next 90 days?” (predictive). This shifts the team’s focus toward future-oriented insights and trains the CEO to think like a strategist using AI, without needing to understand the underlying code or algorithms.