This chapter discusses many of the perennial issues concerning leadership, particularly the contemporary leader, or CEO, life cycle. It gives example by imagining Vladimir Putin as CEO of a company, Russia Inc. and reviews his former presidency to analyzing a CEO's successful performance as head of an organization. Many CEOs, on attaining the top job, go through a three‐stage life cycle: distinct periods of entry, consolidation, and decline. The period of entry is typically characterized by a high degree of uncertainty as fledgling leaders struggle to understand what their new position entails, deal with the legacy of their predecessors, and search for themes that will take the organization forward. Effective leaders manage to shorten the entry period with careful preparation, and the period of decline through a timely exit. They make the most of period two, the phase of consolidation. But no one is capable of running a complex modern corporation indefinitely. In today's fast‐changing world, tenure of seven to eight years is close to optimal for well‐prepared, highly capable, and resilient CEOs.