CEO succession — successes and failures.
Nothing much to add to this Geoff Colvin piece . . .
Wanted: CEO of major corporation
Many corporate boards are failing at leadership development and getting careless about choosing backup CEOs, says Fortune’s Geoff Colvin.
. . . except a hearty “Amen!” The Merrill and Citi CEO debacles — in which there are no obvious successors to the ousted Stan O’Neal and Chuck Prince — point out a major problem in corporate governance.
As Colvin suggests, it’s not about undermining the current CEO by tapping an heir who might become a rival. Rather, it’s about having “bus insurance” — as in “What if Stan gets hit by a bus?” American men in their 50s and 60s — that’s the bulk of the CEO population — sometimes have heart attacks, sometimes get cancer, sometimes are felled by strokes or accidents. Why on earth wouldn’t a board of directors have a better plan in place, even as a stopgap, than what Merrill is doing now — i.e., going without a CEO altogether?
Contrast that approach to the succession established at Xerox, where Ursula Burns has long been groomed to take over from Anne Mulcahy. This Fortune cover story from last month . . .
Xerox’s dynamic duo
Anne Mulcahy and Ursula Burns saved Xerox in a historic turnaround. Now they face a different kind of challenge: sharing power and managing succession.
. . . heads up a theme issue about powerful female executives, but it’s just as fascinating for the window it provides on the process of building a good CEO succession. You’d think that forward-looking CEOs would want to tend to this as much as any other part of their legacy — but it seems that, all too often, egos get in the way.
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[...] my post from the other day, I came across this article on the topic of CEO succession. Smooth transitions in executive suites [...]
[...] represents Merrill’s first-ever outside hire for the CEO role. As my previous comments would indicate, I think that internal succession planning is far more important than the treatment [...]
[...] As we’ve discussed before, Mulcahy and the Xerox board have set up a clear succession plan so that, when Mulcahy is done, Ursula Burns is fully prepared to take over. [...]
[...] given my previous diatribes on this point, I’m pleased that the Motorola board believed that there was someone in the [...]
[...] CEO succession — successes and failures. [...]
[...] and over on this blog, I try to stress the importance of building an enterprise for the long haul. Anne Mulcahy does it, Warren Buffett does it, Jamie Dimon does it, you should do it. This Alan Schwarz article from the [...]
[...] CEO succession — successes and failures. – Nothing much to add to this Geoff Colvin piece . . . Wanted: CEO of major corporation Many corporate boards are failing at leadership development and getting careless about choosing backup CEOs, says Fortune’s Geoff Colvin. … [...]