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The Life Cycle of a CEO— Claudius A. Hildebrand & Robert J. Stark

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Introduction

In fact, Dave hadn’t been the first choice for the CEO position, or even the second or third choice. Word was five others had been offered the job before him. What’s more, a couple of years earlier he’d been unceremoniously fired from his position as divisional president at a leading competitor. No one would have suggested from his educational background, either, that he was CEO material. Not only did he not have a degree from an elite school, but it also took him six years to graduate. He hated college and he’d dropped out for a time.

As Dave’s first year in the CEO seat progressed, the sneering assessments of that Florida night prevailed on the Street; the company’s stock slid 40 percent.

Building on our study findings that CEOs who lead through influence were the most effective, we followed up by conducting interviews to learn about the development advice and training these leaders had received. We asked leaders to describe how they made the journey to becoming the highly effective leaders they were. What emerged is that a leader’s evolution generally proceeds in iterative cycles, with steps forward often followed by backsliding into old habits and then a renewed effort at change. It’s a process of trial and error, and often of fits and starts, as the daily grind of immediate demands diverts attention from one’s inner work. Those who continue to progress in the journey typically go through a three-phase cycle.

First, they are confronted with a necessity for change either because they took on a new challenge that reveals the shortfalls in their leadership or through feedback from their higher-up, colleagues, or mentor.

2. Launch

Indeed, in a recent global survey of 422 CEOs, 68 percent shared that they believed they hadn’t been fully prepared for the role. They believed they had the required strategy and operations skills, but the gap in their preparation lay in what they discovered is unique to the CEO role: how unexpectedly emotionally challenging it is and the great intellectual agility it requires. They had underestimated how different the job is from any other leadership role they’d had in ways that are profoundly disorienting in the early days.

Alternating between internal and external demands is only one way CEOs must learn to divide their time and energy. They also have to focus on the urgent here and now and on longer-term plans. In addition, they must be in command of the “hard stuff” of numbers and devote considerable time to the “soft stuff” of people management. Also crucial is striking a balance between taking decisive charge by quickly making some moves and engaging in learning more about the company. All require both/and thinking rather than either/or thinking. As skilled as leaders may have become in this over the course of their careers, the challenges of the Launch stage greatly up the ante on getting the balance right. Carol Tomé pulled off this balancing act with aplomb.

When CEOs depart during the Complacency Trap stage of the life cycle, generally from years six to ten, inefficiencies that have crept into the organization and problems that have been festering— such as an underperforming unit or product line— constitute much of the low-hanging fruit their successors immediately go after. This invites the question: If those problems are so apparent to new leaders and boards that appoint them, why haven’t they been more effectively addressed?