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Are You Using Your CEO to Best Advantage?
The stats differ on how long a CEO can expect to occupy that spacious corner suite before being retired or moved along to the Board or whatever is going to happen to him or her. I saw one recent study that put it at less than 5 years. Another, by Korn Ferry, is more generous — less than 7 years. A PwC study, while citing the 5-year reign as a median, noted that just under 20 percent of the CEOs of the largest 2500 companies last 10 years or more.
So perhaps we can agree that the job is getting tougher, or the cycle time faster, or Boards are getting more impatient, or something along those lines. Yet some CEOs last a good deal longer than average.
What makes the difference? While there have been millions of words put out there covering a myriad theories for the successes or failures of CEOs, I’m going to suggest one characteristic that has become more important as the average tenure has gone down and the job has gotten tougher: personal branding.
It’s still relatively rare for a CEO to think systematically about his or her personal branding.
Reasons range from reluctance to focus on other things (like growth or innovation or something obviously important) to the fear of appearing too eager for self-aggrandizement.
