“Charismatic CEOs and Succession Planning: Not so Charismatic”
This article takes a look at CEO succession planning. It essentially focuses on charismatic CEOs and how they chose their successor. This article argues that the approach most charismatic CEOs take is flawed, hence, their successors tend to struggle. Most charismatic CEOs often do not make succession planning a priority until it is too late. In cases where a company puts a process in place, charismatic CEOs tend to be domineering in their choice of a successor. In other cases, charismatic CEOs die on the job, thereby making the transition shaky. Although this article delves into the open literature for insights, it also uses a case study to drive home the point that charismatic CEOs’ approach to succession planning is flawed.
The challenges of succession planning are truer today than ever. Indeed, the abrupt departures of two important charismatic CEOs – Charles Prince of Citygroup and Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch – in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which fetched these firms colossal losses have made scholars to beam their searchlight on this neglected aspect of corporate governance. The nonchalance with the way some CEOs handle the process of succession planning not only puts their companies in jeopardy, but also signposts a major criterion on which outgoing CEOs and their executive board members will be evaluated.
Before we proceed, we will issue a caveat: the practice of succession planning runs ahead of the theoretical understanding of the process. In fact, in the course of this research, we did not come across a single work on charismatic leaders. However, we did come across pockets of literature on CEOs and succession planning. It is from these literature and articles from reputable magazines like the Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal that we extrapolated our