Mckinsey has worked extensively with a number of US corporations that sustained outstanding levels of performance during the turbulently competitive period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Over the past several years Gil Marmol and Mike Murray have led a research project to determine whether ten of these high-performing clients (in industries ranging from energy to consumer goods to electronics) had significant similarities in the ways they managed their companies. Marmol and Murray have concluded that these kinds of high-performing companies have six management attributes in common. Here they talk about some of the highlights of these characteristics and the companies that embody them.

1. Driven by leaders

Mike Murray: This is where it all begins: leaders who have performance aspirations that are truly extraordinary.

Gil Marmol: If you don’t have a CEO who is willing to push people to perform better than anyone else in the industry, it’s all over. You can’t achieve any of the other elements of high performance.

Demanding, unreasonable CEOs

Murray: When you compare these people—not just the CEO, but the leaders right through the company—to other leaders that you know, they seem unreasonable. By standards outside their companies they are unreasonable—but...