Two senior members of the world-renowned executive search firm, Spencer Stuart, provide a detailed best-practices roadmap for ensuring continuous leadership in corporate America, based on personal interviews and their work with CEOs.

A comprehensive guide to planning for CEO succession, from the experts at RHR As the demands from stakeholders for consummate leadership and good governance from a company's board of directors, its CEO, and its executive team increase, how the process of CEO succession is carried out has become more critical than ever before. Yet, over the past several years, a growing number of CEOs have failed early in their terms, often with devastating consequences to their companies and stockholders. By far the most common problem is a lack of ownership of the CEO succession process. Inside CEO Succession provides businesses, leaders, and boards with the strategies they need to execute their responsibilities with a heightened level of professionalism and ensure the sustained success of the companies they serve. Written by Dr. Thomas J. Saporito, CEO of RHR International, and Dr. Paul Winum, Senior Partner of RHR International, the lessons of Inside CEO Succession are rooted in RHR's long-standing history of bringing expert knowledge, experience, advice, and counsel to the issues related to CEO succession. The culmination of RHR's 65 years of experience providing expert counsel to the boards of directors of hundreds of companies, it explains how ego, role-relationships, power, and human dynamics associated with relinquishing leadership, preparing successors, and ceding power and authority to other people create undetected problems in the succession process and ultimately cause many CEOs to fail early in their tenures. Distills RHR's 65 years of experience helping businesses deal with CEO succession into one practical resource Presents strategies to enable boards to understand their role in succession planning and how to source leadership that best fits their organization's culture and requirements Brings together business acumen and psychological insight to help readers better prepare for more effective CEO succession To be successful, CEO succession requires a well-defined course of action that ensures that a number of highly capable candidates are ready to assume the chief executive position whether through an unexpected event or a planned transition. Inside CEO Succession is designed to help boards comprehensively manage that process and effectively sustain their company's profitability.

Shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year (International Books category) 2022 Every year, companies spend billions of dollars in board time and headhunter fees on CEO searches. In fact, the selection of the next CEO is the single most important task of the board of directors. Yet, despite the huge amount of time, money, and attention given to the task, many CEO changes fail, with disastrous consequences for all concerned. With so much at stake, it is natural to ask what companies and their boards can do to increase the odds of success. Illustrated with an abundance of real-life examples from interviews with CEOs, C-suite members, members of the boards, and headhunters supporting CEO searches, The Next CEO explains how boards can improve the odds of success with CEO succession by identifying clear CEO mandates and associated CEO profiles and by selecting CEOs that are fi t for purpose. It further explains how the CEOs of leading corporations effectively take charge and create results, providing a roadmap for incoming CEOs. These ideas are brought to life with case studies and interviews with well-known corporations such as ABB, Alibaba, Freudenberg, GE, Google, HNA, HP, Microsoft, Nestle, Nike, Nokia, Novartis, Roche, Sony, Tata, and Zurich Insurance. The book is invaluable practical reading for board members of medium-to-large-size fi rms involved with CEO succession, and for those preparing for their fi rst CEO position. It is also relevant to headhunters who are involved in the process of CEO succession as a working tool for them and their clients. In addition, the book will be relevant to courses on corporate governance and strategic transformation at the executive and MBA levels.

You've heard it before: 50% of all CEO succession attempts fail. Which means 50% must succeed! Learn from leaders who beat the odds in Your CEO Succession Playbook. For Boards and transitioning CEOs, consider this book your strategic companion from the start of the process right through to the hand-off, and discover how to address common concerns along the way. Learn why a CEO should start a conversation about succession planning early, even if they have no intention of leaving their role anytime soon. Stay above the fray by mitigating and managing power plays. And understand how to build a practical framework to help the departing CEO start a new life chapter that moves from success to significance. Your CEO Succession Playbook is a 6-phase game plan for each step in the CEO succession process, one that doesn't require you to work harder and faster, but rather more intentionally. With these strategies, you will build trust, avoid politics, and gain confidence in your leadership pipeline. Among dozens of tactics and a suite of tools, you will get: A practical strategy for introducing the topic of CEO succession to your Board without prematurely accelerating succession; A CEO success profile that you can use to benchmark candidates; A model for determining who has the potential to be the next CEO; Strategies for how to best develop future CEOs; Advice on how to minimize ego-plays and power struggles and avoid "survival of the fittest" politics; Communication samples and tips for each of the 6 key phases; Leadership insights that distinguish who you need to be as a leader to build trust; Self-coaching questions to help you do what's right for your business. Natalie Michael has worked in private practice developing executives for the last fifteen years. Whether as an executive coach, CEO forum chair or succession management consultant, her main goal is to help companies identify and develop executive potential. She has coached hundreds of executives, from Canada to Africa to New Zealand, with clients ranging from Fortune 100 companies to entrepreneurial start-ups. Before turning to coaching and consulting, Natalie led organizations that won accolades such as best-managed company, fastest-growing company and top employer. In her personal time, she loves quiet mornings on her mat and hitting the trails with her family. Brian Conlin is an executive coach, mentor, board member and business advisor who worked in employee-owned organizations for over thirty years. He personally went through a successful transition as the former CEO of Golder Associates, a professional services firm that grew during his leadership from a modest regional business to a global powerhouse with over nine thousand employees and $1.5 billion in annual revenue. During his career, Brian has coached and supported the development of dozens of leaders. Today he coaches executives from small start-ups through to large, complex firms. He enjoys engaging with executives who dream big, want to succeed and care for others. A family man with two grown boys and a granddaughter, he enjoys volunteering for worthy causes, cycling and playing golf. Advance praise for Your CEO Sucession Playbook: "The decision to name a new CEO is one of the most important a company can make. With this book in hand, though, you'll be ready. Every CEO and board member should read it, heed its lessons, and put its tools into action." Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

"Based on extensive interviews with today's . . . corporate leaders, this look at how the best CEOs do their jobs focuses on the mindsets and actions that foster an environment of excellence"--

Whether precipitated by sudden tragedy, CEO performance issues, or a key executive simply going elsewhere or retiring, succession planning has become a front-burner issue in corporate boardrooms across the country. For board members, CEOs, and anyone concerned about the quality of governance in corporate America, CEO Succession fills the need for a practical, best-practices roadmap that puts the board of directors squarely at the helm as the guiding force for ensuring the steady flow of effective leadership. Authors Carey and Ogden draw on personal interviews and their own behind-the-scenes work with the CEOs and directors of some of the leading companies in the world to articulate the field-tested strategies and techniques boards need to create a systematic and transparent planning process that promotes a seamless transition of leadership at every level in the organization. With an up-close look at such companies as Metropolitan Life, Hewlett-Packard, Mellon Bank, and GTE, CEO Succession shows how to put in place the key elements essential in the succession planning process: establish and sustain a reliable succession agenda and timetable; implement a self-renewing succession culture that develops leaders at all levels of management; create a healthy relationship between the Board and CEO that keeps the CEO on track; and benchmark internal candidates for CEO and other top posts with comparable outside leaders. With practical guidelines and experienced advice from leading consultants in this field, CEO Succession offers a long overdue antidote to what stakeholders, Wall Street, and the media have decried as a lack of board leadership in carrying out its fundamental fiduciary responsibility: ensuring the steady flow of effective leadership in Corporate America.