Dennis Carey Info.

In his book, ‘How to Run a Company: Lessons from Top Leaders of the CEO Academy,’ Dennis Carey discusses the role top executives have in a public company:  “Despite the apparent public hostility to corporate executives, their role in a public company – particularly the role of the chief executive officer – has remained poorly understood.  Indeed, one of the paradoxes of business press coverage of corporations is that while the personalities and wealth of CEOs have been exhaustively documented, there has been scant attention to what a CEO actually does.  True, much has been written on the “leadership qualities” or “management styles” of corporate executives.  But this literate is very different from a description of the day-to-day demands of a CEO: how he develops strategy, how he motivates employees, how he works with board members, how he deals with the investor community.”

In his book, ‘CEO Succession: A Window on How Boards Can Get it Right When Choosing a New Chief Executive Officer,’ together with his co-author Dayton Ogden, Dennis Carey takes his experience from “personal interviews and behind-the-scenes work with CEOs and directors of some of the leading companies in the world to articulate the field-tested strategies and techniques boards need to create a systematic and transparent planning process that promotes a seamless transition of leadership at every level in the organization.  With an up-close look at such companies as Metropolitan Life, Hewlett Packard, Mellon Bank and GTE, CEO Succession shows how to put in place the key elements essential in the succession-planning process: establish and sustain a reliable succession agenda and timetable; implement a self-renewing succession culture that develops leaders at all levels of management; create a healthy relationship between the board and CEO that keeps the CEO on track; and benchmark internal candidates for CEO and other top posts with comparable outside leaders.”

In a recent article entitled, “Don’t Force Firms to Split CEO and Chair,” Executive Recruiter Dennis Carey explains why Senator Charles Schumer’s bid to split the chairman and CEO roles at public companies is a bad idea.  He explains that Washington, while focusing on the troubled global economy, is making business decisions that make no common sense.

Many companies, as Dennis Carey points out, show both good management and governance as they are, with the combined chairman and CEO roles.  More than 60% of today’s largest corporations have these roles combined, according to a Korn/Ferry study of the Fortune 100.  To date, there is no evidence that companies that have split these roles, as so many have in Europe, are doing better than are those that have these roles under one leader.

As Mr. Carey asks, “As a recruiter who recruits CEOs and directors, I am wondering where one will find the hundreds of directors who will have time, beyond that which they already spend serving on their current boards, to become a board chairman. Will this change in role make them more effective than they already are as lead directors?”