Are boards changing the way they think about succession planning?
Dysart: Yes, absolutely. In the past, they were a little bit more removed and trusted the management team. Now they recognize the most important thing they can do is select the leader and make sure they have leadership planning in place. They’re spending a lot more time on it and trying to make sure there are procedures in place to evaluate the talent throughout the organization. Boards are recognizing that there are a lot of risks associated with going outside to find a CEO. There may be circumstances when that’s required, but having at least a couple of internal choices is clearly the better option. Judging from what happened at both Citi and Merrill Lynch, where CEOs were forced out but no successors were ready, the financial firms are way behind manufacturing companies like Procter & Gamble, right? I can’t comment on those two specifically. But it depends on each individual. In the industrial space, you can point to companies that have been very good at it and you can point to some
