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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.

Nigel Travis, who led Dunkin’ to strong revenue growth in nine years at the helm, observed in his book The Challenge Culture that companies “can quickly go from success to trouble . . . because the culture does not allow for challenging the status quo.” He shared with us that finding ways to break the spell of satisfaction with success was a main focus of his leadership. That was in part because of what he’d witnessed as a senior executive at Blockbuster.

Notes

Chapter Four: Reinvention

1. Rose Gailey, Ian Johnston, and Andre LeSueur, “Aligning Culture with the Bottom Line: How Companies Can Accelerate Progress,” Hedrick & Struggles, www.heidrick.com/en/insights/culture-shaping/aligning-culture-eith-the-bottom-line-how-companies-can-accelerate-progress#RefN2

1. John Antioco, “How I Did It: Blockbuster’s Former CEO on Sparring with an Activist Shareholder,” Harvard Business Review, April 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/04/how-i-did-it-blockbusters-former-ceo-on-sparring-with-an-activist-shareholder.

1. Dave Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later, Kindle ed. (New York: HarperCollins Leadership), 61.