Nine of Australia's leading CEOs share their secrets of success.

Have you ever wondered how the corporate high flyers run their companies with such panache? Who are the personalities behind the biggest of big business?

In Executive Material, Richard Walsh presents candid and revealing conversations with nine of Australia's most successful CEOs, elite business leaders who have strutted their stuff and lived to tell the tale.

There is Michael Chaney, legendary CEO of Wesfarmers; Catherine Livingstone, whose tenure at Cochlear Ltd made it the market darling of the med tech sector; Wal King, still driving Leighton on to bigger and bolder enterprises; doyen of aviation and former Qantas boss James Strong; ebullient banker John McFarlane, CEO of ANZ; the man who transformed British pay TV, Sam Chisholm; the curmudgeonly chief of retailing, Gerry Harvey; former head of the Ford Motor Company worldwide, Jac Nasser; and the great larrikin achiever of the 80s, former Brambles chief, Gary Pemberton.

Here, nine people of extraordinary achievement describe in their own words what it takes to effectively lead an organisation. They aren't people who have merely sat in their company's wheelhouse for a time and set a fixed and predictable course. They have overseen spectacular changes and growth in the great enterprises to which they have been entrusted. Their stories will intrigue anyone who wants to know how a successful corporate organisation is run.