I was intimately involved in three CEO searches in 2024. I wish I had known at the beginning of the year what I know now.
I serve on the boards of three public companies and one private company. I chair the board of two; three of my companies, for different reasons, required a CEO search last year.
The theory of CEO succession is fairly simple: it’s planned, it’s smooth, it’s an ongoing discussion, it takes about 6-9 months–but that is textbook, not reality. In theory you are having discussions with your CEO about performance and timing and in the best case you have 2-3 years notice that your CEO is planning to retire and so you engage an advisor who helps you map out the market, meet candidates, put them through a process with your board and eventually do the hand off.
But it almost never happens that way. CEOs surprise you – they have life events that change their timing, or they quit. Boards surprise you–the CEO’s performance changes the board’s decision on timing. It is not unusual for someone who was the right CEO in the past to not be the right CEO as the market changes. The market surprises the board; rapid changes you did not expect require different skills.
Because I saw three searches in parallel last year, I learned so much about what can go right and how quickly things can go wrong; as a result, I wanted to share my experience with other people who chair US public company boards. I wanted to help other chairs predict as many of the surprises I saw as possible when they enter a CEO succession process so they can be great chairs through the process. I just wanted to share as a means to support other chairs.
Being a board chair is an unusual, not easy, job. You are leading, but you’re not (the CEO leads most of the time), you are listening, summarizing and reflecting the input from your board to help your CEO, you are herding cats to bring your board to consensus.
In the end your job is to ensure a process that provides strong oversight for the company on behalf of the shareholders–but you are not managing the company. The only major decision you and your board will make is the choice of CEO. So, when the board needs to find a new CEO it is the most important process you will ever lead as board chair, and you want to get to a high-quality, unanimous decision from a room full of strong-willed directors.
I had a vision to create a retreat of experienced board members where we talk through our experiences, with great advisors, and learned from each other. Board chair education focused intensely on CEO succession.
To make it happen I teamed up Karen DeGolia who is a board chair herself and who owns Limerick Lane Cellars in Healdsburg, CA. Alicia Syrett, who manages the Madam Chair community, supported the event with her mailing list and the advisors we brought in were from Egon Zehnder (board and executive recruiting consultants), Pearl Meyer (compensation experts), Wilson Sonsini (lawyers) and Collected Strategies (crisis communications experts).
Together we organized a three-day retreat for 25 US public company chairs – it was an incredible learning experience! Under Chatham House Rules, we had open discussions about what does it look like when a CEO transition goes well, or not well, how to manage the process to guide it to success–intermingled with war stories, laughter, good food and great wine in a beautiful location.
One day I’ll write a book on my CEO and board experiences (maybe, maybe not) but for now the emotional temper tantrums, the difficult personalities, the crazy stories will have to stay under the privacy of Chatham House Rules. Unless you come to a retreat.
I was fortunate to work with Egon Zehnder on the Lumentum and Forvia searches last year. EZ has an extremely thorough and professional international team. They map out and help you run a clear, clean process. But their skill shows through most acutely when you hit bumps in the road. Similarly, the lawyers, keep you out of trouble when the going gets tough, the compensation consultants help you navigate the thorny discussions with the outgoing and incoming CEOs and the communications consultants help you figure out what you can say to whom, when.
I will be organizing more retreats like this in 2026, with my partner Karen, and if you chair a public or private company board, or chair a committee on a public company board, and you are interested in joining a chair retreat, please email me or ping me on LinkedIn and I’ll put you on the list. The retreats will be exclusive, invitation only, intense board education for board and committee chairs on a number of different topics, including CEO succession and board effectiveness.
Ongoing education is a key part of being a public company board director. But once you are experienced it is important to find education that helps you stay up to speed on the tough stuff, not just the basics. That means learning from your peers, both directors and advisors.
