00:00Who actually is actually qualified to run a company in a day and age where things are changing so rapidly?
00:08Who knows what AI is going to do to us in a year or two years from now?
00:11So how do you even pick?
00:12If you're a board and you're trying to select your CEO for the next season, the next five, ten years, how do you go about that process?
00:20I think from a board's point of view, you've got to think hard about CEO transitions well before they happen.
00:27I've seen the best performing boards thinking about it three, four, five, six years ahead of when a CEO might transition, thinking about who's being groomed, who's being set up.
00:40And then in the moment, really making sure that the person coming into the role has all the characteristics you want.
00:46Someone who's bold around setting the direction, someone who understands organizational and cultural change, and who understands the context in the moment.
00:54The context changes all the time.
00:55Do you feel like companies are doing that in terms of that longer term planning?
00:59Because it seems like so many, at least some of the bigger companies out there, when you start to look at the tenure of their existing CEOs, and then you ask, sort of, what's the succession plan?
01:07And it's kind of like crickets.
01:09I know sometimes they don't want to reveal their cards, but you also feel like, well, what's the plan?
01:14Yeah.
01:14Yeah.
01:14Again, I would probably apply the 80-20 rule.
01:19In this case, unfortunately, 80% probably don't do it right.
01:2320%, and these tend to be the best institutions and the best CEOs, do it very well.
01:29They really do spend the time and energy to kind of create the succession agenda, to kind of get the right people into place, to make sure that the board eventually has not just one, but two, three, potentially four people to choose from.
01:45Yeah.
01:45And they're creating the opportunities and making the room for the next generation of leaders.
01:49And I know that, of course, when it comes to the board, succession planning is one of the most important things they have to do.
01:54But in a situation where a CEO is retiring, for example, how involved should that outgoing CEO be in succession planning, especially if you think that he or she is trying to think about their legacy as well?
02:08Mm-hmm, yeah.
02:10A CEO absolutely has a huge responsibility in the two or three or four years of lead-up to their departure in terms of creating a strong bench beneath them that the board can then pick from.
02:25But eventually, it has to be a board-led decision.
02:28This cannot be the CEO anointing their favorite person or the person they believe is right.
02:34They may have a point of view on that, and they can share that with the board, but it's also incumbent on them to make sure that there are sufficient candidates internally.
02:42And, of course, many boards, appropriately, also look externally as part of their due diligence.
02:47Yeah, absolutely.
02:49And I do want to talk a little bit more about the title of your book, A CEO for All Seasons.
02:54We know that there's four of them.
02:55So just briefly walk us through what that means in context of this book.
02:59Yeah, absolutely.
03:00So we talk about it as stepping up, that's when you're getting ready to be a leader, a CEO, starting strong the first three years typically, staying ahead, kind of the middle innings, and then sending it forward, and that's usually the last chapter.
03:17And each one of those seasons has some very specific things in the book that we highlight around what best practices are we interviewed, some of the best CEOs out there through a very rigorous methodology to kind of get their insights.
03:31But to me, the interesting thing was actually the four or five lessons that we saw across the seasons that were really quite interesting, which I'd be happy to highlight if you'd like.
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