Deciding When - And How - to Fill Your Own Shoes

Few decisions a CEO will make involve more soul-searching, more agony, and have more impact on the long-term strategy of the company than the decision to select an appropriate replacement: choosing a successor. Given the stakes and the impact on a CEO’s legacy, it is no wonder so many defer the decision—often until too late—instead of addressing it early.

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Sprint: corporate America has been rocked by botched successions at some of the most storied names in business, companies that should have known better, companies with the resources, the infrastructure, and the deep benches of talent to facilitate a thoughtful, orderly succession. These failures of succession management by the CEO left the companies dangerously adrift at a critical time.

Why is this most crucial of CEO decisions so frequently mismanaged, and often ignored altogether? And how can you make certain it doesn’t happen on your watch? You will hear from peers who will share their experiences of positive succession planning exercises at their companies, some of the challenges faced in deciding on a successor, how they made the decision whether to look inside or outside the company, and how to smooth the process. Additionally, you will hear the latest thinking in the science of identifying and grooming successor CEOs.

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Getting Results: From Decision to Successful Action

With a volatile 2008 anticipated, chief executives increasingly find themselves in situations requiring decisive action. This is true across diverse industries. For example, in the energy and automotive sectors, discontinuous change is ongoing due to fuel prices, climate and energy security issues. In the traditional media sector, the Internet is taking over, and in the pharmaceutical industry, a lack of blockbusters is threatening ongoing growth.

Whether faced with a crisis situation or with delivering sustained success, your top team must set clear direction, build new capabilities, and inspire the organization to achieve results. Chief executives who hone their decision making processes are able to do so by focusing on a small set of critical strategic levers. Truly great strategic leaders make decisions that enable successful capability building and renewal rather than unleashing chaos throughout the organization.

You will hear from your peers who have met these challenges. Join us as we discuss the leadership and organizational capabilities needed to execute against the most influential decisions you and your teams have made or will make.

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Build or buy?

Among the CEO’s biggest challenges is the decision whether and when to buy a company. What’s the best way to accrue long-term shareholder value: home-spun organic growth or through strategic acquisitions? How does the CEO make a decision on pulling the trigger on an acquisition: intuitive gut feel or a detailed data-driven financial analyses (or something in between)? There is constant pressure to grow the top-line and some of the most successful companies in the world (GE, IBM and Oracle to name a few) have used M&A to reinvent their companies and enter new markets. But is acquisition always the right answer; when does it make sense to "say no" and "stick to the knitting"? How do today’s CEOs make the best decisions, avoid the inherent pitfalls and ultimately make the right calls in building their company.

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