Posts Tagged ‘boards’

Yesterday I was asked to talk about what I do at Weber Shandwick to our Crisis and Issues group in New York. It was an end of the week get together to take the edge off of all the long hours. I talked about reputational issues and answered several questions. It was a nice opportunity for me to reflect too.

I was asked where all the celebrity CEOs had gone which made me recall my first book on CEO reputation. The book was released at the height of the dot com boom when 22 year old CEOs were the norm and celebrity CEOs were plentiful.  In my book, I tried to make the point that it was not CEO celebrity that mattered but CEO credibility. As I was answering this question, I realized that I hit on some of the right notes as to why CEO celebrity was not the same today but missed a few. In fact, I mentioned that being CEO today was not  an easy job whatsoever. CEOs are much more embattled.  Here are some of the reasons I talked about yesterday but others as well taken from an Economist article I was saving to post about.

• CEO tenure is shorter than it used to be (on average 6.6 years, according to Booz’s research).  They usually come into office with great fanfare. They get approximately two years of grace when they start out (more like 18 months), 2 years to provide evidence that their strategy is working and two years to get pushed out. After six years like this, it’s best to be a CEO nobody.
• CEOs don’t have all the power anymore. Most CEOs now have separate chairmans that are looking over their shoulders and asking a lot of questions.  Booz found that in 2002 48% of incoming CEOs were also chairmen.  In 2009, that number dropped to 12%.  Hard to be a celebrity when there is power sharing going on.
• CEO compensation is always a headline and increasingly links the CEO title to perceptions of greed. CEO compensation is actually declining.
• Shareholders and stakeholders are not sitting idle. They are much more aggressive.  Some hedge funds are actively browbeating CEO and corporate decisions and in executives’ faces. The ridicule can get strenuous.
• Boards are more active too. They don’t want their reputations shamed either by poor CEO decisions or poor behavior. And according to Korn Ferry, new board members are more likely to be deep in international experience and have worked abroad. They are not necessarily golfing buddies like board members of yore. Angry birds maybe, but not necessarily tee time!

With all these barriers in place to curb the power of CEOs, celebrity CEOs can hardly flourish. Instead, we are looking at a new world of convening CEOs who communicate internally to employees, communicate online or through video to netizens, travel to speak to customers and influencers at forums they convene themselves (IBM‘s Smarter Planet  method), partner with third parties and government to problem solve on today’s economic woes and so forth.

RHR International was mentioned today in an article in the WSJ about the recent revolving door for CEOs. Not that this is new. CEOs have been coming and going for some time now. But what was new was that among the 83 CEOs of publicly held companies surveyed, the board seemed to be a greater source of tension than it used to be. Nearly three quarters wish they were included more in board discussions of succession planning.  And as one would expect, the top two threats to their tenure, according to CEOs, were the current economy (39%) and rapid industry change (22%).  However, a third top threat to CEO tenure was strategy disagreements with the board (17%).  As a watcher of  CEO trends, I find it noteworthy that CEOs mentioned disagreements with boards and desire greater collaboration over transitioning.  The disagreements over strategy (spin offs, shedding assets, etc) does seem to be a rising cause for CEO exits these days. Something has changed.  I wonder if the new tension that is developing is because boards are more active now because of the criticism that they were no more than a rubber stamp on CEO activities or if the strategic choices facing boards today are infinitely more complex and disruptive. When no one knows the true answer, there is room for disagreement. CEOs and boards seem to be caught in this new tango.

Another finding which I liked seeing because it provides some hard numbers about something I have observed was that half of CEOs feel isolated and lonely. For this reason, CEOs should reach out to other CEOs in different industries, find mentors or retired CEOs to talk to. It can be debilitating so finding an ear to listen and advise is highly recommended.

   Interesting article on what boards talk about when they talk about sustainability.  The interview was in MIT’s Sloan Management Review with Christoph Lueneburger, head of Egon Zehnder’s sustainability practice. He tells a wonderful story about something that was said by the founder of Patagonia that is worth repeating.

“I think Patagonia is a leader. I had a conversation with Rick Ridgeway the other day, who leads sustainability at the company, and he said something fascinating. They were doing their Christmas catalogue, and Rick was down there, looking at the always-beautiful pictures and so forth. And Yvon Chouinard, the founder, says in the meeting, “That’s a nice catalogue, but tell me how it is that we’re not just incenting people to buy more stuff they don’t need?”

As Lueneburger says, Patagonia is not saying that its all about growth but instead saying, “It is not growth that will ensure our sustainability, but values.” Yes, Patagonia is exceptional and privately-held but this is where the intersection between value and values happens in the right way.

A few items crossed my desk [or should I say desktop] this week having to do with corporate governance. The first is an interesting article in the Financial Times about banning blackberries from boardrooms. The argument is that board members are charged with fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders and blackberrying or texting during meetings might be considered a breach of contract.  Board members are not doing their jobs if they are busy typing replies or reading scores of emails in meetings. I enjoyed the article because authors’ David Beatty and J Mark Weber also got into the idea of “inattention blindness” and how that might interfere with the weighty decisions required of board members in this tough business climate. One neuroscientist in the article is quoted saying that humans can not concentrate on two things at once.  I recall reading that people can only hold seven things in their head at once which is a reason most of us experience infofog a good part of the time.  At least I do. Anyhow, the point is that board members need to pay full  attention during board meetings today, particularly when the stakes are so high, and responding to electronic messages can only direct attention away from the hard work at hand.  Since board reputations are already in jeopary as one company after another failed this year, I wholeheartedly agree with the authors’ advice that boards enact “no wireless” policies in meetings for now.

I was also reading Karen Kane’s blog on corporate governance and totally concurr with a quote from Stephen Davis of the Yale Millstein Center that she cited.  Davis said that today “directors need the tools of a politician.” In other words, as Kane says, they need to persuade and explain why they took the actions they did. I think that in the future we will be seeing more explaining as Obamanomics works its way down to boards.  Greater transparency and clarification for stakeholders as well as shareholders will become more common in the years ahead. 

Now to tie the two items above together….if President Obama can do without his blackberry at times, so can board members.