CLINGING ONTO POWER, FAILING TO GROOM A SUCCESSOR
However a few of the most troublesome are the results of the alternative drawback: Comparatively profitable CEOs who cling onto energy and fail to groom an appropriate successor. The longer CEOs keep in place, the extra totally they inhabit their jobs.
It’s not simply that they relish all the eye (and cash). It’s that they will’t consider themselves as being something apart from the CEO, their each minute scheduled, their each transfer monitored.
Even accountable CEOs can delay eager about retirement – there is only one extra venture to complete, yet one more transformation to supervise, yet one more cowl story to pose for. The much less accountable ones subvert the succession course of, both consciously or unconsciously, by blocking the seek for a successor or undermining doable replacements.
The story of Disney’s battle to discover a successor to Bob Iger as CEO is especially tortured. The corporate groomed Thomas Staggs for the job, making him COO, solely to alter its thoughts, partly at Iger’s urging.
Then Iger, who had repeatedly delayed his introduced date for retirement, impetuously introduced that he was stepping down instantly in February 2020 and persuaded the board to nominate Chapek as his successor regardless of Chapek’s lack of expertise within the firm’s core enterprise of creating inventive content material. Chapek’s situation of employment advised an issue – he would function each CEO and CEO-in-training and, alongside together with his workplace, Iger would retain inventive management as govt chair of the board.
Positive sufficient, Chapek was out inside three years and Iger remains to be operating the corporate – yet one more “boomerang CEO” theoretically saving the day after their hand-picked successor ran issues off the rails. (Disney says it would identify Iger’s successor in early 2026, earlier than his contract runs out on the finish of the yr.)
