While most of the UK enjoyed a rainy national holiday 🌧️ on Monday, the Working It podcast team was at work, recording an interview with best-selling author and productivity guru Cal Newport about his latest book, Slow productivity. More on this to come, but I was struck by Cal’s insistence that the only way forward, for any of us, is to do less, but do it better.
It prompted me to slow down and reduce the number of things I do at once. So if I haven’t responded to your email or message, that’s why. (I’ll figure out an elegant “hold” response for when my inbox is overwhelmed. If you have a good example, send it: isabel.berwick@ft.com.)
Read on to find out why CEOs often don’t last long at the top, especially when they are women. I had to pause Office Therapy for a week to gather more expert advice on a thorny topic, but we’ll be back!
What’s the problem with CEOs?
I started delving into some depressing data about the small number of female CEOs and their short tenure once they reach the top. And then while you’re at it, I also found myself down a rabbit hole of CEO timelines. Few of them are encouraging 🐰.
Overall, Russell Reynolds Associates, which publishes a quarterly report Global CEO Turnover Rate, finds that CEO turnover is at an all-time high. S&P 500 and FTSE 350 bosses stayed an average of 7.6 years in their jobs in 2022, compared to 9.2 years in 2018.
I wanted to know more about turnover trends, especially for women at the top of business, so I asked Ty Wiggins, Russell Reynolds’ global leader of its CEO and executive transition practice. (I was going to say he’s a “CEO whisperer” but then I thought horses 🐎).
Is the so-called “glass cliff” real? That is the disgusting practice of appointing a woman to lead an organization when she is already in deep trouble. It’s a no-win situation. When my colleague Pilita Clark last written On this topic, some of the reader comments showed a certain, ahem, skepticism that this is a real concept. As Financial Times readers can still comment anonymously, we can assume these are real opinions. (Example: “So, if you’re a CEO and you fail, it’s because of a glass cliff. And if you’re an executive and you don’t become CEO, it’s because of a glass ceiling.” 🤦🏼♀️)
Ty told me yes, the glass cliff is real. “Given that women CEOs are more than twice as likely (24.1 percent) to leave their roles within two years of being appointed, and four times more likely than men to last less than 12 months in the role CEO position, it certainly seems like the data supports the glass cliff.”
Why is this? Ty mentions a possible problem with the tables. “Do they have realistic expectations about the performance of a new CEO or are they predisposed to making a decision too soon? This would extend to support around decisions, initiatives and key people.”
In general, Ty believes boards should act together to elect the next leader as soon as a new boss is installed. “The best time to start thinking about finding your next CEO is immediately after naming your current CEO. It is important that the board aligns on what the next leader should be like, who is not necessarily a replica of their current CEO. It is also important not to shy away from sensitivities, but to approach them sensitively: the best succession plans are those where boards and incumbent CEOs can come together constructively.”
Many pieces of this board/CEO puzzle remain imperfect, but perhaps it is in this central but sometimes complicated relationship where we can find a better future for the few women who make it to the top. Example of a depressing statistic from the Russell Reynolds Trends Index: “Of the 68 CEOs appointed in the first quarter of 2024, only five were women. At the current rate of change, it is estimated that it will take 88 years to achieve global gender parity ⚖️.”
In general, the need for a very close and time-consuming relationship with the board of directors seems to surprise some new CEOs. Ty just wrote a book. The new CEO – and in research found that: “40 percent of new CEOs are surprised by the degree of interaction required with the board of directors. For some, the time spent on board-related activities was so significant that they struggled to execute on initial priorities.”
Can better board-CEO relationships help more women get to the top and stay there? Do boards need to start looking for their next (dare I say, potentially female) leader as soon as they’ve appointed someone new? So many questions – email me about all of this. isabel.berwick@ft.com.
This week on the Working It podcast
It was a pleasure speaking to my friend, colleague and fellow FT podcaster, Clare Barrett, at Daunt Books in town. We cover a wide range of Working It topics, including workplace dilemmas, how to become a better manager and finding a new definition of ambition. The conversation was at a launch event for my book, Career prepared for the futureand we have turned it into this week’s podcast episode. We hope you find it useful.
Five notable stories from the world of work
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The cheeky reactions show that we are in the era of shamelessness: So many business and political failures (think WeWork’s Adam Neumann) are followed rather quickly by unrepentant returns. Emma Jacobs looks at the changing world of rebounding.
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Is the corporate DEI panic finally over? Amid warnings that diversity programs are being rolled back, especially in the United States, Taylor Nicole Rogers finds a much more optimistic reality among professionals in the sector.
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How deep are the problems at St James’s Place? If you like to delve into corporate culture (and how leaders react to escalating crises), this is a great article by Emma Dunkley and Sally Hickey about a large UK financial services provider, which focuses on wealthy clients.
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Could Ketamine Be the Next Solution for Workplace Depression? Emma Jacobs discusses the emerging trend of ketamine, taken under supervision, as a workplace benefit to help with mental health conditions.
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Garrick Club votes to allow female members for the first time: Those bastions of (literally) old-school networking, London’s gentlemen’s clubs, are under threat. Women will finally be allowed into the Garrick. Will any of them apply?
A few words from the Working It community
There was a great response to last week’s newsletter about new approaches to tackling bullying, and I will return to that in a longer article. Keep the ideas and personal experiences coming. It’s a reckoning that should have been done a long time ago.
In the meantime, I wanted to highlight the views of readers of last week’s newsletter on the EY/Saïd Business School research on The “blind spots” of leaders”, especially when their organizations go through periods of change and transformation. Here’s Nuala Walsh, CEO of MindEquity Consulting:
“The EY/Saïd report rightly highlights the importance of people-centred leadership in transformational change. However, simply tuning into colleagues’ emotions and measuring behavior is not the same as understanding or interpreting behavior. Success depends not only on analyzing CEOs’ blind spots, but also on their “deaf spots.”
“Too often, people ignore voices that are different or dissenting, inconvenient or uncomfortable. We listen to what we want, particularly in high-stakes emotional situations. . . “Leaders who actively monitor these associated blind and deaf spots tend to make fewer decision errors and achieve better results, gaining an underappreciated source of advantage.”
And finally . . .
Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s book giveaway. Winners will be notified tomorrow and there will be another drawing next week.