Operator’s Manual
New CEOs Aren’t Silver Bullet Problem Solvers — So Stop Treating Them That Way
No one person can fix everything wrong with a company, so why do boards and investors continue to act like they can?
Maybe it was the stale pastry. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Whatever it was, though, when I heard my fellow board member say it, I felt like puking.
“What we need,” he bloviated, “is a world-class CEO.”
There it goes again, I thought, the myth of a new CEO as a silver bullet. Too often we fall prey to simplistic, infantile thinking; we project all of our wishes, dreams, and aspirations onto a single person or idea in the vain hope that they, finally, will solve our problems and calm our fears.
We doom the incoming CEO to failure.
In businesses, I’ve seen boards fixate on the act of replacing the CEO. The problem with this is that, in a sense, we doom the incoming CEO to failure. No single person can fix everything.
Even more troubling, this mythology is often is built on an almost willful ignorance of the facts. If the CEO (or head of sales or head of marketing or CTO) really needs to be replaced — and, believe me…
