ARLINGTON, VA -- As many as 82% of chief executives who move on from the top role generally remain key players either in their own organization or another, according to a continuing global study of more than 270 CEO careers by Arlington, VA, management consultants Healthy Companies International.
Of the 272 chief executive officers and presidents in the study, 27% who moved on from the head role were in due course promoted by their organization to a higher position such as chairman or vice chairman. Seven percent went on to the hold the same C-level position with another organization
“The past 15 years have seen greater change and movement in CEO careers,” said Robert Rosen, Chief Executive Officer of Healthy Companies. “Some chief executives willingly step down for another opportunity, while many are forced out because of execution problems. We wanted to learn more about departing CEOs and this study provides a barometer of sorts on the career choices they make. We learned there are many different paths open to ex-CEOs.”
Among the study’s findings:
· Fewer than one in five former CEOs (18%) no longer have active careers and have moved on to retirement, are in prison or deceased.
· Of the still-active CEOs, more than half (51%) remain with their organization while the balance moved on to a new employer.
· A further 20% of the active CEOs moved on to take up Board positions.
“Surely we realize why CEO turnover may be regarded as a sign of organizational instability,” said Rosen, “but by digging beneath the surface we’ve learned that much of the movement is natural succession, albeit with shorter tenure. In many cases we found merely a graceful shifting among decision makers with an outgoing chief remaining not very far from the C-suite. And the CEOs who actually depart a company usually end up in a comparable, if not more senior, position elsewhere.”
According to Rosen, the corporate world occupied by today’s chief executive is different than 10 years ago. “There’s greater transparency and scrutiny, more pressure to perform within tighter time frames, and poor CEOs are more likely to get pushed out sooner. But it seems as often as not the chief executive is forced out by problems beyond his or her control.”
For more than 20 years Healthy Companies has studied the careers of an ever-growing number of C-level executives. Completed in January 2010, the new research focuses on 272 present or former CEOs or their equivalent from 29 countries, including 161 participants from the U.S.
About Healthy Companies
Founded in 1988 by Robert Rosen and based in Arlington, VA, Healthy Companies International (www.healthycompanies.com) is a management consulting and research firm that helps chief executive officers and their teams build healthy, high-performance organizations. As a trusted client partner and thought leader, the firm has maintained a continuing dialogue with CEOs and developed extensive research contributing to numerous books and papers on leadership, growth, change management, communication strategy, executive coaching and performance improvement.