The firm’s celebrity CEO isn’t the only superstar boss who won’t leave the stage
to hand it to Sir Elton John. Not only is he the only musician ever to have top-ten hit singles in Britain for six decades in a row. He is also a rare septuagenarian megastar who knows how to bow out in style. On November 20th at a relatively tender 75 years old, he performed what he said would be his last ever concert in America at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. One of the showstoppers was “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, the theme song for graceful retirements.
Succession problems are not unique to Disney. In fact they plague corporate America, especially when departing’s Jack Welch and Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ barista-in-chief. Some high-profileis FedEx, the delivery firm whose founder Fred Smith stepped down as boss in June after 49 years. There is a probationary air to some imperial handovers.
What makes it so hard to fill such oversized shoes? One clue comes from Mr Iger himself. It is hubris. In his memoir, “The Ride of a Lifetime”, published in 2019, he acknowledges that alls like to think that they are irreplaceable. Yet good leadership, he adds, demands the opposite. It is about bringing on a successor, identifying skills they need to develop and being honest with them when they are not ready for the next step. That is true.
In theory, that’s where strong, independent board members should have come in. It’s their job to handle succession planning. While thehas a responsibility to nurture layers of talent within the firm, it’s up to the board to examine internal and external candidates and decide on a replacement. In practice, however,-list bosses often dominate their boards.
For all such corporate-governance fiascos, some comebacks work. Mr Iger’s might. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management likens his return to that of second-world-war generals such as Douglas MacArthur or George Patton, motivated more by restoring Disney’s lustre than by personal ambition.
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