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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.

Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, exemplifies the influencer style of leadership. He recalled that when he stepped into the CEO position at Adobe, “I quickly realized there was no direct control, it was all influence.” He described how he worked intensively on developing his people leadership skills.

That was the result of Cote’s marathoner “go slow to go fast” moves coming to fruition. Rather than flashy, highly risky, and dramatic moves, he’d made rigorously calibrated incremental improvements in business operations. These were combined with a steady stream of divestments and moderate acquisitions. Indeed, he is a standout example of someone who has mastered programmatic M&A, the systematic, highly strategic, and well-paced acquisition of relatively small companies compared the the size of the acquiring firm.

1. Nigel Travis, The Challenge Culture, Kindle ed. (New York: PublicAffairs,2018), 34.

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