What Every CEO Must Know: 37 Secrets to Lead with Confidence and Power
Bill Miller
Beeline Publishing (November 2025)

And what every aspiring C-level executive must learn

There are only a few head-napping revelations in this book, and Bill Miller makes no claim that there are any. What we have here are insights accumulated by a business thinker with wide and deep experience in leadership and management, insights that are eminently worthy of careful consideration. I have no idea how he arrived at a total of 37 “strategic lessons,” nor do I care. His thinking is crystal clear as he explains how you can achieve separate but related — sometimes interdependent — objectives.

More specifically, HOW TO

o Formulate a strategy that can make a vision a reality
o Respond to dishonest competitors
o Avoid or overcome blind spots to innovation
o Communicate with high-impact rather than clarity cleverness
o Delegate effectively while avoiding micromanagement

o Build an A team
o Make the right (data-driven) decisions with the best information (often with others)
o Prepare for rapid-response crisis management
o Support and sustain integrity, honesty, and transparency: ALWAYS
o Avoid the high cost(s) of delaying decisions, change initiatives, and trust without verification

o Convince workers that silence about unacceptable behavior is complicity
o Develop the “Negotiation Muscle”
o Avoid a “too good to be true” partnership
o Convince workers of the importance of continuous learning to them
o Be able to explain why confidence is power IF earned and deserved

Miller seems to be an empiricist who increases an on-going accumulation of knowledge and wisdom from real-world sources and situations. He is also a pragmatist, determined (obsessed?) to understand what works, what doesn’t, and why so that he can share what he has learned with as many other people as possible, such as CEOs and those who aspire to become one. In fact, I think his book is a “must read” for almost all executives (whatever their position, talents, and experience may be) in almost all organizations (whatever their size and nature may be).

Those who share my high regard for Bill Miller’s What Every CEO Must Know are urged to  check out another book, CEO Ready: What You Need to Know to Earn the Job — and Keep the Job, written by Mark Thompson and Byron Loflin, and published by Harvard Business Review Press (November 2025).

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading What Every CEO Must Know: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand,  record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to “Conclusion” comments in most of the chapters and Appendix A: “The Founder and First-Time CEO Confidence Weekly Checklist.” (Pages 295-303)

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.