CEOs are making headlines everywhere... Steve Jobs resigns from Apple and is chalking out a plan for the future of Apple, Larry Page is busy strategizing Google's next aggressive move. In the meanwhile, we are also seeing some finger pointing at CEO's, of which the prominent ones are the sacking of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and the huge criticism of HP CEO Apotheker.
We have seen the media post-mortem the failures in Yahoo and HP and point out mistakes in the company's strategy that leads to certain failures...and worse attributing it to the CEO. What bothers me more is the constant criticism by journalists and the tech-bloggers alike regarding how the company made a bad decision in selecting so-and-so person as the CEO. There are frequent out-bursts about how this person was from a totally different business and could not have done justice in this line of business, etc..
Here is an excerpt from the article on Carol Bartz
and one on Apotheker
The problem addressed in both the above articles is about failure of a CEO who is new to that particular business.
Does this mean that a CEO who is familiar with the business fare well? Maybe. But this requirement fairly diminshes the scope of electing a new CEO.
The classic guidelines for electing a CEO has been mostly past performance and personality - vision, aggressiveness, enthusiasm, dynamism, strategizing, leadership, integrity, etc etc.
I think that this specific requirement of "familiarity with the line of business" is a gamble.It may work or it may not. Does the aggressive tech industry which is dynamically changing causing this move where we can't afford a new CEO(new to the industry) to settle down and bring in slow changes? or is this just a short window view of the big picture?
We have seen the media post-mortem the failures in Yahoo and HP and point out mistakes in the company's strategy that leads to certain failures...and worse attributing it to the CEO. What bothers me more is the constant criticism by journalists and the tech-bloggers alike regarding how the company made a bad decision in selecting so-and-so person as the CEO. There are frequent out-bursts about how this person was from a totally different business and could not have done justice in this line of business, etc..
Here is an excerpt from the article on Carol Bartz
"First reaction: what exactly does Autodesk have to do with a consumer-focused Internet company like Yahoo? Bartz certainly sounds like she has a long history of running a big company – Autodesk has more than 7,000 employees and $2 billion in annual revenue – but what expertise and vision does she have that’s relevant to one of the world’s biggest Web companies, in desperate need of re-inventing itself?"
and one on Apotheker
"The thing is, Apotheker’s relevant experience was serving as CEO of SAP. What’s SAP? SAP is an enterprise software and consulting company. Honestly, we all should have seen this coming. You don’t bring in an enterprise consulting guy to turn around a PC and device maker. You bring in an enterprise consulting guy to turn a PC and device maker into an enterprise consulting company."
The problem addressed in both the above articles is about failure of a CEO who is new to that particular business.
Does this mean that a CEO who is familiar with the business fare well? Maybe. But this requirement fairly diminshes the scope of electing a new CEO.
The classic guidelines for electing a CEO has been mostly past performance and personality - vision, aggressiveness, enthusiasm, dynamism, strategizing, leadership, integrity, etc etc.
I think that this specific requirement of "familiarity with the line of business" is a gamble.It may work or it may not. Does the aggressive tech industry which is dynamically changing causing this move where we can't afford a new CEO(new to the industry) to settle down and bring in slow changes? or is this just a short window view of the big picture?
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