CEO Succession: A Window on How Boards Can Get It Right When Choosing a New Chief Executive

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.

Dennis C. Carey is vice-chairman of Spencer Stuart US, a leading executive search firm with offices in the US, the UK and Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. He has placed over 50 CEOs in the last four years for companies ranging from AT&T to Unisys, and is the founder of the M&A Group, a group of 50 CEOs which includes the heads of Lucent, Dell Computer, All State, and Dow Chemical. He has authored numerous articles on governance, CEO succession, and business strategy that have appeared in Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dayton Ogden is currently co-chairman of Spencer Stuart. A much sought-after speaker and commentator on key trends affecting CEOs, he serves on the board of directors of several US companies and is secretary and director of Project Hope, a leading healthcare foundation based in Washington, D.C. He lives in New Canaan, Connecticut.