Seven Myths of CEO Succession

Seven Myths of CEO Succession

David F. Larcker
Stanford University – Graduate School of Business
Stephen A. Miles
The Miles Group (TMG)
Brian Tayan
Stanford University – Graduate School of Business
March 19, 2014
Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Closer Look Series: Topics, Issues and Controversies in Corporate Governance and Leadership No. CGRP-39
Abstract:
Many believe that the selection of the CEO is the single most important decision that a board of directors can make. In recent years, several high profile transitions at major corporations have cast a spotlight on succession and called into question the reliability of the process that companies use to identify and develop future leaders.
In this Closer Look, we examine seven common myths relating to CEO succession. These myths include the beliefs that:
1. Companies Know Who the Next CEO Will Be
2. There is One Best Model for Succession
3. The CEO Should Pick a Successor
4. Succession is Primarily a “Risk Management” Exercise
5. Boards Know How to Evaluate CEO Talent
6. Boards Prefer Internal Candidates
7. Boards Want a Female or Minority CEO Read more of this post

‘Maids get stressed living and working 24 hours a day’

‘Maids get stressed living and working 24 hours a day’
Saturday, March 22, 2014 – 06:00
Zul Othman
The New Paper
The elderly woman spat at her regularly and in a fit of anger, the Myanmar maid retaliated and hit her.
The family found out about the assault on the elderly woman and reported it to the police.
The maid was jailed for four weeks as a result, said Ms Valli Pillai, a representative from foreign worker help group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (Home). Read more of this post

How Harry Potter Bankrolled A Textbook Business; Publishing the hit series by J.K. Rowling has allowed U.K.-based Bloomsbury Publishing to expand into new territory.

March 21, 2014
CFO.com | US
How Harry Potter Bankrolled A Textbook Business
Publishing the hit series by J.K. Rowling has allowed U.K.-based Bloomsbury Publishing to expand into new territory.
Marielle Segarra
When Bloomsbury Publishing launched nearly 30 years ago, it didn’t set out to get into textbooks, exactly. It didn’t plan on publishing the best-selling children’s book series of all time. It had one specific goal: to bring high-quality books to the mass market. It has far exceeded that goal, publishing successful novels like The English Patient, The Kite Runner and of course, the Harry Potter novels. Read more of this post

House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address; Boom with a view: What a Manhattan apartment block tells us about the American economy

New York’s mega-rich
Boom with a view: What a Manhattan apartment block tells us about the American economy
Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address. By Michael Gross. Atria Books; 394 pages; $28. Buy fromAmazon.com Read more of this post

Learning Chinese: The memory game; A new way of teaching Chinese ideograms to foreign audiences

Learning Chinese: The memory game; A new way of teaching Chinese ideograms to foreign audiences
Mar 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
Chineasy: The New Way to Read Chinese. By Shaolan Hsueh. Thames Hudson; 192 pages; £12.95. Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk Read more of this post

“When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.”

Why you should hustle every day (and how Jerry Seinfeld did it)
HERBERT LUI
5 days ago
Herbert Lui does marketing for clients such as Pivotal Labs, Busy Building Things, and Renegades. This post originally appeared on the Busy Building Things blog and was edited by Robleh Jama. Read more of this post

5 Things Super Lucky People Do

5 Things Super Lucky People Do
BY KEVIN DAUM
Do you feel lucky? Here’s a clear-cut approach for improving your luck today.
“The Luck of the Irish” is an American phrase that comes from the days of the gold rush in the 1800s. Intolerant Americans figured the Irish people weren’t smart enough to find gold, and blamed their success on being lucky rather than skilled. In reality, America’s early immigrants have time and again proven themselves to be hardworking and smart enoughto generate their own good fortune consistently. Read more of this post

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup

Dancing Giants: How a rusting giant can act more like a startup
BY ADAM L. PENENBERG
ON MARCH 21, 2014
Lean Startup Machine), has a bleak– but simple — prescription for big companies: Act more like a startup or enjoy a long slide into irrelevance and creative destruction. Read more of this post

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company

Success can build a culture of arrogance that will destroy a company
By Max Nisen @MaxNisen March 20, 2014
Even for the volatile tech industry, the implosion of Canadian telecom giant Nortel was spectacular. In 2000, it was the 9th most valuable corporation in the world with a market cap of $283 billion. A decade later, it was bankrupt and ceasing operations.

Read more of this post

How Goldman Sachs became a household name; In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years

How Goldman Sachs became a household name
March 21, 2014: 8:00 AM ET
In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven Mandis examines how the trading firm went from being Wall Street’s darling to Main Street’s villain in just three years.
By Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large
FORTUNE — Becoming a household name has not been a good thing for Goldman Sachs (GS). Not long ago, few people outside Wall Street and the top tier of corporate America paid much attention to Goldman, other than to note how many former Goldmanites seemed to be concentrated in the upper echelons of the federal government and other seats of power. Then came the worldwide financial meltdown, and almost overnight, Goldman came to be invoked as a symbol of everything that had gone wrong. Read more of this post

Bill Clinton on leadership

Bill Clinton on leadership
March 20, 2014: 7:49 AM ET
The former President distills his wisdom for Fortune.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership means bringing people together in pursuit of a common cause, developing a plan to achieve it, and staying with it until the goal is achieved. If the leader holds a public or private position with other defined responsibilities, leadership also requires the ability to carry out those tasks and to respond to unforeseen problems and opportunities when they arise. It is helpful to be able to clearly articulate a vision of where you want to go, develop a realistic strategy to get there, and attract talented, committed people with a wide variety of knowledge, perspectives, and skills to do what needs to be done. In the modern world, I believe lasting positive results are more likely to occur when leaders practice inclusion and cooperation rather than authoritarian unilateralism. Even those who lead the way don’t have all the answers. Read more of this post

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?

What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?
by Quy Huy and Timo Vuori | Mar 21, 2014
Nokia lost the smartphone battle despite having half of the global market share in 2007. Some argue that it was down to software, others that it was complacency. We argue that collective emotions within the company were a big part of the story
Leaders who are able to identify and manage patterns of emotions in a collective are better able to make their ambitious strategies a reality. Our argument centres around the idea that the emotions felt by a large number of people within an organisation can determine the success of strategy implementation even when these feelings go unexpressed. Read more of this post

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop

A New Pepsi Ad Shocks Londoners Waiting At The Bus Stop
AMANDA MACIAS ADVERTISING MAR. 21, 2014, 6:59 AM
Pepsi Max kicked off its ‘Unbelievable’ campaign by pranking commuters sitting inside a typical London bus stop.
A stop on New Oxford Street was rigged with hidden digital technology that tricks unsuspecting passengers into thinking they are steps away from hovering alien ships, a loose tiger, and a giant robot with laser beam eyes.
Rachel Holmes, senior marketing manager at PepsiCo UK said, “It truly lives up to Pepsi Max’s Unbelievable proposition from the innovative media planning through to the fantastic creative,”reports the Drum.

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996

This Is What Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Resume Looked Like In 1996
LISA EADICICCO TECH MAR. 21, 2014, 9:18 PM
Google co-founder Sergey Brin may be one of the biggest names in today’s tech industry, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, like many of us, his resume looked fairly plain and basic back in the early 1990s.
This old version of Brin’s resume, which was last updated in 1996, is making the rounds on Hacker News today.
The resume details some of Brin’s earliest projects, including one titled “Movie Ratings” that sounds a lot like the recommendation engine built into today’s entertainment apps such as Netflix. Read more of this post

Sting reminds us all that sometimes you have to gaze back into the past in order to move forward; The events of childhood are like the Hebrew alphabet; the vowels are missing, and the older self has to make sense of them

Going Home Again
MARCH 20, 2014
David Brooks
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The TED conference is dedicated to innovation. Most of the people who give TED talks are working on some creative project: to invent new bionic limbs for amputees, new telescopes, new fusion reactors or new protest movements to reduce the power of money in politics. Read more of this post