Out with the Old, In With The Old?
If you did not know, the now former CEO of Nike retired (at least that is how Nike termed it in their press release) and was replaced by a long-time veteran leader. This reminded me of some other surprising leadership changes where prior leaders were brought back to run the company (e.g., Kevin Plank @ Under Armour, Bob Iger at Disney and Steve Jobs at Apple).
What does this say about companies as they assess and implement leadership transition plans? Do you want to bring someone in new that will “shake things up”, “put a fresh set of eyes on things” or continue with the existing strategy? The answer is a little bit of all of them.
If an organization is not thinking through and implementing leadership succession plan, I would say that its long-term viability is in question. Below are some articles that may be of interest to address this vital part of an entity’s life cycle:
- You can’t risk everything on a CEO who hasn’t proved themselves (thetimes.com)
- Four Key Components To Optimize A Successful Leadership Transition (forbes.com)
- How I Did It: Giving Up the CEO Seat (hbr.org)
- How to get leadership transition right | McKinsey
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent that will survive but those that can best manage change.”
- Charles Darwin
Here are some other items of interest:
- Year-End Tax Strategies (eisneramper.com) (Webinar; 11/25 12pm-330pm)
As always, please don’t hesitate to email myself (jsanders@mpl-law.com), Andy Miller (amiller@mpl-law.com), Christian Miller (cmiller@mpl-law.com), Erik Spurlin (espurlin@mpl-law.com), Brad Leber (bleber@mpl-law.com) or anyone in our office with questions or comments.
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