The Leap to Leader

To succeed as a senior executive, you need more than just special skills and competencies. You need a new mindset.

When Penny Herscher stepped into her first chief executive role, at the tech firm Simplex Solutions, she felt sure she was prepared. After all, she help marketing, business development and general manager positions at her previous company, Synopsys, and she was comfortable taking on difficult challenges. Even so, her confidence quickly evaporated. “I had no clue how to be a CEO,” she says.