Dennis Carey Info.

In recent news at Korn/Ferry International, Byrne Mulrooney has joined the Korn/Ferry team as the CEO of Futurestep.  Korn/Ferry International, a global provider of talent management solutions where Dennis Carey is a Senior Client Partner, announced this change on April 1, 2010.

As the CEO of Futurestep, Mr. Mulrooney will be in charge of this division of Korn/Ferry which is a market leader in recruitment process outsourcing, with a presence in close to 20 countries.

Before coming to Korn/Ferry, Mr. Mulrooney was President and COO of Flynn Transportation Services, a third party logistics company.

Mark Spitz

In the 80s and 90s the International Swimming Hall of Fame was displayed swimming memorabilia, such as Johnny Wiessmuller’s Olympic medals and Mark Spitz’s starting block, in style. In the early 2000s, however, the state of the displays was deteriorating and the Hall of Fame’s finances were in the dog house. To complete the picture, a burglary in December, 2004 resulted in the loss of a majority of its most valuable memorabilia.

In May of 2005 Bruce Wigo stepped in to become the Hall’s new Chief Executive Officer. With the help of his longtime friend Dennis Carey, who was at the time a consultant for an executive search firm, they were able to convince the entire 21 member board to resign and also to give Wigo and Carey the authority to appoint a new board. After the board was dissolved Dennis Carey immediately began to work on convincing Mark Spitz to head the new board of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Dennis Carey is a former swimmer and the son of a swimming coach and will is also a member of the new board at the Hall of Fame.

As the head of the newly appointed board, Spitz said that he hoped there would be stricter standards for selection into the hall, more fund-raising and sponsorships. He also looked forward to seeing more modernization of the various displays so that they could be more interactive and child-friendly.

Dennis Carey, in his book entitled CEO Succession,  makes a strong case for the newly appointed CEO to already begin planning his replacement, even as he is dealing with the other myriad urgent issues vying for his attention at the outset of his tenure. As Carey puts it,

“Planning for a successor can go a long way toward reassuring employees and investors and steadying the company. And if the new CEO isn’t interested in the task, the board should be.”

Carey understands that planning for your own departure might not be a task most people would want to tackle. According to Carey,

“After all, it’s human nature to avoid dealing with things that entail planning for your own demise. Yet, no CEO is ever completely safe from an abrupt end to a career, whether through illness, poor performance, or other reasons. No one is immortal and there is no guarantee that a CEO will remain with the company until retirement.”

According to Carey, a successful company is one that can, “focus on building strength and leadership at every level.”