When programming, we chain functions together. Function A calls function B. And so forth.

You do not have to program this way, you could write an entire program using a single function. It would be a fun exercise to write a non-trivial program using a single function… as long as you delegate the code writing to AI because human beings quickly struggle with long functions.

A key compiler optimization is ‘inlining’: the compiler takes your function definition and it tries to substitute it at the call location. It is conceptually quite simple. Consider the following example where the function add3 calls the function add.

int add(int x, int y) {
    return x + y;
}

int add3(int x, int y, int z) {
    return add(add(x, y), z);
}

You can manually inline the call as follows.

int add3(int x, int y, int z) {
    return x + y + z;
}

A function call is reasonably cheap performance-wise, but not free. If the function takes non-trivial parameters, you might need to save and restore them on the stack, so you get extra loads and stores. You need to jump into the function, and then jump out at the end. And depending on the function call convention on your system, and the type of instructions you are using, there are extra instructions at the beginning and at the end.

If a function is sufficiently simple, such as my add function, it should always be inlined when performance is critical. Let us examine a concrete example. Let me sum the integers in an array.

for (int x : numbers) {
  sum = add(sum, x);
}

I am using my MacBook (M4 processor with LLVM).

Wow. The inline version is over 20 times faster.

Let us try to see what is happening. The call site of the ‘add’ function is just a straight loop with a call to the function.

ldr    w1, [x19], #0x4
bl     0x100021740    ; add(int, int)
cmp    x19, x20
b.ne   0x100001368    ; <+28>

The function itself is as cheap as it can be: just two instructions.

add    w0, w1, w0
ret

So, we spend 6 instructions for each addition. It takes about 3 cycles per addition.

What about the inline function?

ldp    q4, q5, [x12, #-0x20]
ldp    q6, q7, [x12], #0x40
add.4s v0, v4, v0
add.4s v1, v5, v1
add.4s v2, v6, v2
add.4s v3, v7, v3
subs   x13, x13, #0x10
b.ne   0x1000013fc    ; <+104>

It is entirely different. The compiler has converted the addition to advanced (SIMD) instructions processing blocks of 16 integers using 8 instructions. So we are down to half an instruction per integer (from 6 instructions). So we use 12 times fewer instructions. On top of having fewer instructions, the processor is able to retire more instructions per cycle, for a massive performance boost.

What if we prevented the compiler from using these fancy instructions while still inlining? We still get a significant performance boost (about 10x faster).

Ok. But the add function is a bit extreme. We know it should always be inlined. What about something less trivial like a function that counts the number of spaces in a string.

size_t count_spaces(std::string_view sv) {
    size_t count = 0;
    for (char c : sv) {
        if (c == ' ') ++count;
    }
    return count;
}

If the string is reasonably long, then the overhead of the function call should be negligible.
Let us pass a string of 1000 characters.

The inline version is not only not faster, but it is even slightly slower. I am not sure why.

What if I use short strings (say between 0 and 6 characters)? Then the inline function is measurably faster.

Takeaways:

1. Short and simple functions should be inlined when possible if performance is a concern. The benefits can be impressive.
2. For functions that can be fast or slow, the decision as to whether to inline or not depends on the input. For string processing functions, the size of the string may determine whether inlining is necessary for best performance.

Note: My source code is available.

I’m excited to announce the release of Entity Framework Core 10 provider for Firebird.

These look really low.

Source:  Work | 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey

“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.”
— Michael Porter

The world’s best CEOs didn’t win by optimizing the present.
They won by having the courage to kill a profitable past to fund an uncertain future.

What separates exceptional CEOs from merely successful ones isn’t charisma, IQ, or timing. It’s their ability to make asymmetric bets early, before the evidence is comfortable and while the old business is still throwing off cash.

The leaders in CEO Excellence faced radically different industries, geographies, and constraints, yet they kept arriving at the same hard conclusion: growth requires trade-offs, focus, and conviction.

Across technology, finance, healthcare, energy, and consumer brands, the pattern repeats. Strategy wasn’t about protecting what worked.

It was about deliberately dismantling it to create what’s next.

Key Takeaways

• Great CEOs make the future expensive on purpose
  They reallocate capital, talent, and attention away from today’s profit pools before decline forces their hand.

• Culture is a strategic lever, not a value statement
  From Microsoft to Netflix to LEGO, behavior change preceded business model change.

• Focus beats optionality
  The best leaders said “no” far more aggressively than their peers—and stuck to it.

• Transformation is an operating system, not a program
  These CEOs embedded new decision rules, metrics, and forums—not slogans.

• Long-term advantage is built in moments of discomfort
  The hardest moves were made when the old model still looked “good enough.”

Overview Summary

This is not a list of inspirational stories or personality traits. It’s a pattern library drawn from 67 CEOs who led through inflection points—cloud, AI, fintech, renewables, platform shifts, globalization, and regulation.

Across industries, the same strategic throughline emerges: durable leadership means reallocating resources ahead of certainty, redesigning the organization to match the future, and holding the line when results lag intent.

Whether scaling a digital platform, modernizing a bank, pivoting an energy portfolio, or rebuilding a legacy brand, these leaders treated strategy as a living system—one that required continuous pruning, renewal, and reinforcement.

67 of the World’s Best CEOs from CEO Excellence

In the book CEO Excellence, McKinsey studied 67 CEOs who consistently outperformed peers over long time horizons.
The leaders listed below represent that group—chosen not for fame, but for the difficult, often unpopular decisions they made to reposition their companies for the future.

1. Ajay Banga – Mastercard
2. Alain Bejjani – Majid Al Futtaim
3. Aliko Dangote – Dangote Group
4. Andrew Wilson – Electronic Arts
5. Ana Botín – Grupo Santander
6. Bill George – Medtronic
7. Brad D. Smith – Intuit
8. David Thodey – Telstra
9. Dick Boer – Ahold Delhaize
10. Doug Baker Jr. – Ecolab
11. Ed Breen – Tyco International
12. Feike Sijbesma – DSM
13. Flemming Ørnskov – Galderma
14. Frank Blake – Home Depot
15. Francesco Starace – Enel
16. Gail Kelly – Westpac
17. Gil Shwed – Checkpoint Software
18. Greg Case – Aon
19. Henrik Poulsen – Ørsted
20. Herbert Hainer – Adidas
21. Hubert Joly – Best Buy
22. Ivan Menezes – Diageo
23. Jacques Aschenbroich – Valeo
24. Jamie Dimon – JPMorgan Chase
25. James Miwangi – Equity Group
26. Johan Molin – Assa Abloy
27. Johan Thijs – KBC
28. Jim Owens – Caterpillar
29. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp – LEGO
30. Kan Trakulhoon – Siam Cement Group
31. V. Kamath – ICICI Bank
32. Kasper Rørsted – Adidas
33. Kazuo Hirai – Sony
34. Ken Chenault – American Express
35. Ken Powell – General Mills
36. Larry Culp – Danaher / General Electric
37. Lars Rebien Sørensen – Novo Nordisk
38. Lilach Asher‑Topilsky – Israel Discount Bank
39. Lip-Bu Tan – Cadence Design Systems
40. Lynn Good – Duke Energy
41. Marc Casper – Thermo Fisher Scientific
42. Marillyn Hewson – Lockheed Martin
43. Marjorie Yang – Esquel
44. Masahiko Uotani – Shiseido
45. Maurice Lévy – Publicis
46. Mary Barra – General Motors
47. Matti Lievonen – Neste
48. Michael Fisher – Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
49. Mitchell Elegbe – Interswitch
50. Mike Mahoney – Boston Scientific
51. Nancy McKinstry – Wolters Kluwer
52. Oliver Bäte – Allianz
53. Patrick Pouyanné – Total
54. Peter Brabeck‑Letmathe – Nestlé
55. Peter Voser – Shell
56. Piyush Gupta – DBS
57. Reed Hastings – Netflix
58. Richard Davis – U.S. Bankcorp
59. Roberto Setúbal – Itaú Unibanco
60. Rodney O’Neal – Delphi
61. Roger Ferguson – TIAA
62. Ronnie Leten – Atlas Copco
63. Sandy Cutler – Eaton Corporation
64. Satya Nadella – Microsoft
65. Shantanu Narayen – Adobe
66. Sundar Pichai – Alphabet / Google
67. Toby Cosgrove – Cleveland Clinic

67 of the World’s Best CEOs Grouped by Industry

These leaders came from very different worlds—software, banking, healthcare, energy, manufacturing.

They faced different regulators, customers, technologies, and cycles.

But when you look past the surface, the same leadership moment shows up again and again.

Technology, Software & Digital Platforms

The thread: Every one of these leaders had to kill a profitable past to fund an uncertain future.

• Satya Nadella – Microsoft — Rewired the culture from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all” while shifting the profit engine to cloud.
• Sundar Pichai – Alphabet/Google — Scaled a founder-centric company by institutionalizing disciplined product councils and AI bets.
• Shantanu Narayen – Adobe — Pulled off the high-stakes leap from boxed software to subscriptions without wrecking margins.
• Reed Hastings – Netflix — Used radical transparency and “keeper tests” to build an unmatched high-autonomy culture.
• Gil Shwed – Check Point Software — Built a cybersecurity compounder through relentless product focus and quiet, disciplined M&A.
• Brad D. Smith – Intuit — Made “design for delight” a real operating system, not a poster on the wall.
• Lip-Bu Tan – Cadence Design Systems — Rescued Cadence by narrowing to the most mission-critical chip-design customers and winning them deeply.
• Kazuo Hirai – Sony — Orchestrated Sony’s turnaround by killing pet projects and betting on a few profitable cores.
• Andrew Wilson – Electronic Arts — Led EA’s shift from boxed games to live services and data-driven franchise management.

Financial Services, Banking & Payments

The thread: From fortress balance sheets to fintech plays — these leaders proved “boring” industries can reinvent themselves.

• Jamie Dimon – JPMorgan Chase — Built the “fortress balance sheet” and a bench so deep the firm can succession-plan at every layer.
• Ajay Banga – Mastercard — Turned Mastercard from a plastic card brand into a rails-and-data network.
• Ana Botín – Grupo Santander — Balanced family control, activists, and regulators while digitizing a 19th-century bank.
• Piyush Gupta – DBS — Ran DBS like a tech company with a banking license, wiring the org around journeys and APIs.
• K.V. Kamath – ICICI Bank — Used disciplined project finance to put ICICI at the center of India’s infrastructure build-out.
• James Miwangi – Equity Group — Proved you can build a high-growth bank on financial inclusion long before it was a buzzword.
• Mitchell Elegbe – Interswitch — Built the invisible plumbing behind Nigeria’s digital payments ecosystem.
• Gail Kelly – Westpac — Led through post-crisis regulatory shifts without losing growth or reputation.
• Johan Thijs – KBC — Made KBC a quiet compounder through boringly excellent bank-insurance execution.
• Lilach Asher-Topilsky – Israel Discount Bank — Cleaned up a messy balance sheet while pushing into the digital age.
• Richard Davis – U.S. Bancorp — Hard-wired community orientation into core strategy, not just the CSR deck.

Insurance, Risk & Professional Services

The thread: These leaders turned fragmented advisory businesses into integrated solution platforms.

• Oliver Bäte – Allianz — Tightened the company around capital discipline and risk-based pricing at massive scale.
• Greg Case – Aon — Integrated silos so clients bought multi-line solutions, not one-off insurance products.
• Roger Ferguson – TIAA — Modernized TIAA while staying true to its long-term, mission-driven roots.

Healthcare & Life Sciences

The thread: Mission-driven didn’t mean margin-soft — these CEOs built compounding machines around patient outcomes.

• Bill George – Medtronic — Scaled Medtronic while turning “authentic leadership” into a widely studied operating philosophy.
• Mike Mahoney – Boston Scientific — Took the company from litigation overhang to growth story via focused innovation bets.
• Toby Cosgrove – Cleveland Clinic — Designed a physician-led system-of-systems rather than a loose hospital network.
• Michael Fisher – Cincinnati Children’s Hospital — Built a research-plus-care flywheel for pediatric medicine.
• Marc Casper – Thermo Fisher Scientific — Built life-science infrastructure by being the steady “picks and shovels” player.
• Lars Rebien Sørensen – Novo Nordisk — Proved a diabetes-focused pharma could be both mission-driven and a compounding machine.
• Flemming Ørnskov – Galderma — Repositioned specialty pharma around rare-disease focus and disciplined product prioritization.

Energy, Utilities & Renewables

The thread: The boldest strategic pivots on this list happened here — leaders who bet the company on a different energy future.

• Henrik Poulsen – Ørsted — Executed the audacious pivot from fossil fuels to offshore wind years before the herd.
• Francesco Starace – Enel — Reframed a legacy utility as a renewables and grid-innovation platform.
• Lynn Good – Duke Energy — Navigated coal retirements, regulatory trade-offs, and the renewables pivot.
• Matti Lievonen – Neste — Repositioned a refiner as a renewable-fuels pioneer via technology and policy bets.
• Peter Voser – Shell — Reset Shell’s trajectory through portfolio pruning and stricter capital discipline.
• Patrick Pouyanné – Total — Balanced the hydrocarbon cash engine with accelerating bets on renewables and LNG.

Industrials, Manufacturing & Capital Goods

The thread: Cycles, complexity, and commoditization — these leaders won by building operating systems, not just products.

• Larry Culp – Danaher / GE — Used the Danaher playbook to make lean and daily management the heartbeat of GE.
• Sandy Cutler – Eaton — Re-architected the portfolio toward higher-value, less cyclical businesses via disciplined capital bets.
• Jim Owens – Caterpillar — Guided through cycles by treating downturns as capacity-building moments.
• Ronnie Leten – Atlas Copco — Ran on decentralization and ROCE, letting small units stay entrepreneurial.
• Rodney O’Neal – Delphi — Turned a near-bankrupt company into a credible tech supplier through ruthless safety and engineering focus.
• Jacques Aschenbroich – Valeo — Positioned Valeo as a key systems supplier for the software-defined car.
• Johan Molin – ASSA ABLOY — Used disciplined bolt-on M&A to build the global access-solutions leader.
• Kan Trakulhoon – Siam Cement Group — Simplified conglomerate sprawl into a coherent strategic architecture.

Consumer Goods, Retail & Brands

The thread: In a world of fickle consumers, these leaders built enduring brand architectures and cultural staying power.

• Mary Barra – General Motors — Fought legacy politics while committing billions to an EV, software, and services future.
• Hubert Joly – Best Buy — Showed a turnaround could be people-first, using employees and vendors as the strategy.
• Jørgen Vig Knudstorp – LEGO — Dragged LEGO back to basics by killing distractions and doubling down on the brick.
• Herbert Hainer – Adidas — Blended performance credibility with lifestyle appeal to create a global challenger.
• Kasper Rørsted – Adidas — Pushed toward sharper focus and margin discipline in a fashion-driven category.
• Ivan Menezes – Diageo — Turned Diageo into an emerging-market growth engine while stewarding heritage brands.
• Ken Powell – General Mills — Rotated portfolio and brands rather than chasing fads one at a time.
• Masahiko Uotani – Shiseido — Revitalized a heritage beauty brand by blending Japanese craft with global ambition.
• Peter Brabeck-Letmathe – Nestlé — Shifted Nestlé toward nutrition and health, redefining what a food company could be.

Apparel & Textiles

→ Folded into Consumer for cleaner grouping:

• Marjorie Yang – Esquel — Escaped the apparel “race to the bottom” by owning quality and upstream relationships at scale.

Telecom & Information Services

The thread: Commodity pipes, premium execution.

• David Thodey – Telstra — Forced Telstra to obsess over NPS and digital self-service in what behaved like a utility market.
• Nancy McKinstry – Wolters Kluwer — Quietly transformed a print publisher into an expert software and data provider.

Diversified Conglomerates & Holding Groups

The thread: When you can do anything, the hardest leadership move is deciding what NOT to do.

• Aliko Dangote – Dangote Group — Built an African industrial empire by vertically integrating from cement to refineries.
• Alain Bejjani – Majid Al Futtaim — Built a diversified consumer ecosystem across the Middle East.
• Roberto Setúbal – Itaú Unibanco — Institutionalized performance culture across generations of family leadership.
• Ed Breen – Tyco International — Rebuilt trust and value after scandal through disciplined breakup and portfolio clarity.

Chemicals, Nutrition & Specialty Materials

The thread: Reinvention from the molecule up.

• Feike Sijbesma – DSM — Proved a chemical company could be nutrition- and sustainability-led.
• Doug Baker Jr. – Ecolab — Embedded water, hygiene, and sustainability as core value drivers, not side projects.

Advertising & Marketing Services

• Maurice Lévy – Publicis — Bet early and hard on digital, dragging Publicis into the internet and platform era.

Aerospace & Defense

• Marillyn Hewson – Lockheed Martin — Led through geopolitical complexity while driving operational discipline and innovation at scale.

Final Thoughts

The defining job of a CEO isn’t to preserve success.
It’s to decide what must be let go—before circumstances decide for you.

In an AI-accelerated world, the cost of waiting has never been higher. The leaders who win next won’t have better forecasts—they’ll have better decision systems.

Get the Book

These are the CEO patterns I use inside my Strategic Leader System to help executives think bigger, decide faster, and lead smarter in the AI era.

This book is where it starts.

CEO Excellence distills what consistently separates the best CEOs from the rest—based on rigorous research and interviews with 67 of the world’s top-performing leaders.

If you lead people and are accountable for the future, this is essential reading.
Get CEO Excellence on Amazon

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The post The 67 CEOs Who Redefined Excellence appeared first on JD Meier.

Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Feb. 1, 2026.

Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter.

Most popular stories on GeekWire

Oregon theater marquee joked about ‘Melania’ movie, and manager says Amazon pulled the film

The manager of the Lake Theater & Cafe in Lake Oswego, Ore., said it was “weird” that the film even exists and “funny” to screen it at the anti-establishment theater. … Read More

Microsoft’s historic plunge: Why the company lost $357 billion in value despite strong results

Microsoft beat its own forecast. Revenue rose 17%. … Read More

Amazon stock sinks 10% after Q4 profit miss as Jassy signals $200B in capital spending

Amazon posted record quarterly revenue and strong cloud growth in Q4 — but its stock fell after the company revealed its capital expenditure plans for 2026. … Read More

T-Mobile layoffs: Telecom giant cuts 393 jobs across Washington state, including VP roles

T-Mobile is laying off 393 employees spanning more than 200 different job titles, from analysts, engineers and technicians to directors and managers. … Read More

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Software development roles account for the largest share of the layoffs, with engineering management, program management, and technical product roles also hit hard. … Read More

Why these startup founders are leaving Seattle for San Francisco

Seattle’s startup ecosystem has its strengths, and the city is a global AI hub. … Read More

Smartsheet layoffs: Enterprise software giant cuts staff

The layoffs come amid a wave of recent cutbacks at Seattle-area tech companies. … Read More

Amazon names Amit Agarwal to lead seller services as Dharmesh Mehta becomes Andy Jassy’s new TA

Amazon named a new executive leader for its Selling Partner Services business, one of the most consequential parts of the company, and said the division’s current chief will become CEO Andy Jassy’s next technical advisor. … Read More

OpenAI inks huge lease in Bellevue, doubling down on Seattle region near Microsoft and Amazon HQs

The company is taking an additional ten floors at City Center Plaza in downtown Bellevue, boosting its footprint to nearly 300,000 square feet. … Read More

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy defends $200B spending plan: ‘This isn’t some sort of quixotic top-line grab’

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Copilot now shows a warning when you don’t take a break, and reminds you that you’re a human, not an AI.

Despite having a Gemini Pro and the recently launched ChatGPT Go subscriptions, I still talk to these AIs cautiously, with each prompt carefully crafted. But with Copilot, I never really cared. I ask it the most random stuff popping up in my head, and it’s partly because I know that Copilot’s free version has seemingly unlimited access.

But in spite of my apathy, Copilot cared enough to tell me to take a break from work. And how did it know that I was working? I used the Microsoft AI for some low-level research that lasted for several hours.

Then, out of nowhere, I got a pop-up at the top of the Copilot chat interface with the words “Time for a break? Copilot is an AI, but you’re not. It might feel nice to take a breather.”

Well, it indeed felt nice to take a breather. But at first, I thought Microsoft sent this notification to gently nudge me into slowing down with the prompts, as I may be nearing a daily limit. But after 5 minutes, I continued using it normally, and there wasn’t any sign of reaching a limit.

Copilot tracks how long you use it

Of course, almost all modern-day cloud applications track how long a user stays on their platform, especially the AI-powered ones. But what Microsoft did with their AI is different and strategic, to say the least. I’ll explain in a bit.

I was using the web version of Copilot, and the notification was a non-intrusive pop-up at the top centre of the Copilot chat interface. There is a button to dismiss it.

It’s not like I was asking queries every minute or so. The tab was active for hours, but I prompted in Copilot every 10 or 15 minutes, and I was switching tabs all the while. From Microsoft’s end, that looks like sustained engagement with high prompt frequency and consistent interaction.

We have seen this before. YouTube shows “Take a break” reminders after long viewing sessions. Apple’s Screen Time nudges you when you exceed app limits.

Modern AI services track this kind of data by default, and I don’t expect any different from Copilot. Once your usage crosses certain internal thresholds, the system likely triggers a soft intervention. In this case, a break reminder.

To be clear, we are not sure if this is a part of Microsoft’s recently announced plans of rethinking how they push AI, and we also haven’t seen anyone else reporting on this, so far.

Either way, I like that Copilot cares, even if it has a hidden agenda. Because when the free versions of every other AI model, like ChatGPT or Gemini, or Claude, tell me that I’ll have to wait until I can use their service further, Copilot acts as if it cares and gently reminds me to rest.

New features are coming to Copilot, and Microsoft is doubling down

Microsoft is also rolling out a steady stream of new features to keep existing users invested in the platform.

• Pinned chats in Copilot: For someone like me who uses Copilot daily to find macro nutrients in my diet, dictionary, thesaurus, etc, having pinned chats for each of these is a very welcome feature in Copilot.
  
• Long-term memory: Microsoft says Copilot is now better at remembering useful context from previous conversations. At the same time, users can ask Copilot to forget specific information or manage memory through Settings.
  
• Study and Learn mode: From the composer bar, students and lifelong learners can now generate quizzes, create flashcards, upload notes, and even learn out loud using Microsoft’s Mico voice system.
• Copilot on macOS is catching up with Windows and the web: The Mac app now supports features like Podcasts, Imagine, Library, Connectors, Read Aloud, smarter notifications, and exporting content to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or PDF.
• Group chat summaries: Copilot can now summarize long group conversations and turn them into clean, editable Pages that you can save or share.
• Copilot.com now supports pasting more than 10,240 characters: If you paste anything longer, it is automatically uploaded as a file. For people working with research papers, code, transcripts, or large documents, this removes one of the most annoying limitations.

  

• New iOS home screen widget: Microsoft has launched a new iOS home screen widget, similar to what Android users got in 2025. It comes in two sizes and lets you access common Copilot actions without opening the app first.

Even as Microsoft works on adding more features to Copilot, there is no denying the fact that people are just not that interested in the company’s AI efforts. Also, I always felt that Cortana had more personality than Copilot. However, the fact that it asked me to take a break from work has me intrigued.

But that’s just me, and the lack of trust in Windows is now universal. Judging by how Windows users have reacted over the past two years, that trust is still very much a work in progress.

That being said, the Windows President has promised to take initiatives to bring back trust in Windows. Also, plans to scale back on intrusive AI are a step in the right direction. Until that happens, you can safely remove AI features from Windows 11 without using any sketchy third-party tools.

The post Microsoft Copilot now reminds you to take a break from AI because you’re a human appeared first on Windows Latest