Elena Lytkina Botelho
Partner
Washington, DC
Elena is a highly sought after advisor for leading CEOs, boards, and investors globally. Elena initiated and co-leads The CEO Genome® Project featured in a cover article of Harvard Business Review and in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller book The CEO Next Door. The CEO Genome® Project is an extensive research and client practice supporting CEOs, executives on the path to CEO, and boards managing all stages of CEO succession. This research and insights have been featured in leading CEO forums, on TEDx, UPenn, CNN.com, other major media and conferences.
Elena has been a ghSMART Partner for more than 15 years and is a member of the McKinsey M&A Integration Council.
Career Highlights:
McKinsey & Company, Associate Partner
AIG-Brunswick, Moscow
Education:
The Wharton School, MBA
SUNY Binghamton, BS
Insights
Building A Relationship With The Board Is Critical For New CEOs
To develop successful relationships, a new CEO needs to jump right in when it comes to establishing a leadership role with the board.
The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
A 10-year study of more than 17,000 C-suite executive assessments looked at who gets to the top and how.
What Sets Successful CEOs Apart
At the top of the ladder, the stakes are high and the demands intense. Too many CEOs falter in the job; about a quarter of the Fortune 500 chiefs who leave their firms each year are forced out.
Navigating BANI Challenges: An Action Plan for Boards
In today’s business world, leaders face unprecedented challenges that have fundamentally altered corporate governance. The familiar VUCA framework (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) that guided organizations for decades no longer fully captures our current reality. We’ve entered what experts now recognize as a BANI world — brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible — demanding a complete rethinking of leadership and governance strategies.
Beware the Transition from an Iconic CEO
Disney, Starbucks, P&G, Microsoft, GE, Ford, Twitter, Dell, Nike, and scores of other marquee companies in their prime have stumbled painfully in CEO transitions.
Selecting a New Leader: Data Nuggets vs. Data Noise
A complaint we hear often from boards is that the volume of data received from HR comes without a clear sense of the few salient datapoints that should have the greatest impact on strategy-setting and policymaking.
Companies are looking at the value proposition of productivity, with the need to minimize burnout
The pandemic has changed more than where we work; it’s also required us to reassess how we work.
Unexpected Companies Produce Some of the Best CEOs
It is tempting to assume that the largest academy companies like GE and McKinsey have an edge when it comes to developing talent.
When the Heir Apparent is the Wrong Choice for CEO
Maintaining the CEO pipeline is most boards’ top succession planning challenge. Yet even at the most respected companies with disciplined succession processes in place, well-suited candidates may be overshadowed by “safe” or “chosen” ones.
What to Do If Your Career is Stalled and You Don’t Know Why
The careers of talented executives are often derailed by seemingly trivial issues, many of which are utterly fixable.
When Getting Fired Is Good for Your Career
Most leaders are, deep down, afraid of failure. But a 10-year study of over 2,600 leaders showed almost half (45%) suffered at least one major career blow-up — like getting fired, messing up a major deal, or blowing an acquisition.
Seemingly ‘Safe’ People Bets That Can Trip Up CEOs
Check out five of the most common safety traps executives fall into when selecting the people that make up their leadership team.
The Surprising Truth about what makes a Great CEO
It turns out that everything you might think about CEOs may be wrong.
Your 3 Step Guide to Becoming CEO
People assume CEOs had their eyes on the top job from day one. Actually that’s not the case – our research shows 70% of CEOs don’t start out their careers with that goal in mind.
The cost to shareholders of picking the wrong CEOs is a stunning $112 billion a year
As the public debates the merits of the recent corporate tax cuts, most people are dangerously oblivious to a bigger and in the long run costlier problem: that of picking the wrong CEOs to lead companies in the first place.
The CEO Next Door
Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell overturn the myths about what it takes to get to the top and succeed.
If You Want a Good Relationship With Your Board, You Need to Ask These Questions
We were recently called up to Chicago to coach an entrepreneur of a $50-million company whose frustration level with his board was moving toward detonation.
Why the secret to nailing an interview is the exact opposite of what everybody thinks
Congratulations, you’ve made the short list of candidates for your dream job. Now all you have to do is pass the final test: How do I walk into the room and convince the decision makers that I’m their best choice?
How CEOs Without College Degrees Got to the Top
In a dataset of 2,600 CEOs, analysts were surprised to discover that 8% had no college degree.
Building A Relationship With The Board Is Critical For New CEOs
To develop successful relationships, a new CEO needs to jump right in when it comes to establishing a leadership role with the board.
The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
A 10-year study of more than 17,000 C-suite executive assessments looked at who gets to the top and how.
What Sets Successful CEOs Apart
At the top of the ladder, the stakes are high and the demands intense. Too many CEOs falter in the job; about a quarter of the Fortune 500 chiefs who leave their firms each year are forced out.
Navigating BANI Challenges: An Action Plan for Boards
In today’s business world, leaders face unprecedented challenges that have fundamentally altered corporate governance. The familiar VUCA framework (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) that guided organizations for decades no longer fully captures our current reality. We’ve entered what experts now recognize as a BANI world — brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible — demanding a complete rethinking of leadership and governance strategies.
Beware the Transition from an Iconic CEO
Disney, Starbucks, P&G, Microsoft, GE, Ford, Twitter, Dell, Nike, and scores of other marquee companies in their prime have stumbled painfully in CEO transitions.
Selecting a New Leader: Data Nuggets vs. Data Noise
A complaint we hear often from boards is that the volume of data received from HR comes without a clear sense of the few salient datapoints that should have the greatest impact on strategy-setting and policymaking.