Chiefs With the Skills of a COO Gain Favor as Celebrity CEOs Fade
Carly Fiorina is unemployed. Michael Eisner is grappling with how to spend his retirement years. Hank Greenberg had to vacate his corner office after becoming a focus of criminal and civil investigations.
Each day, it seems, another well-known business icon departs, forced out or pressured to retire by corporate directors seeking change. But if the celebrity CEO is out of fashion, what exactly is in vogue in the corner office?
More than vision, more than long-term strategizing and certainly more than facility in front of a TV camera, many boards want CEOs who can mind the store. Pragmatism and a focus on day-to-day operations and the bottom line is in. So is being a team player with directors and other senior executives.
In many ways, this model is the traditional job description of a chief operating officer, a job that has been eliminated in recent years at many companies and one that CEOs were supposed to perform while also serving as their corporation's public face. While the old crop of CEOs put the high-profile end of their jobs on the front burner, their successors are less comfortable in the limelight and more apt to focus internally on their companies.
Few outside the technology world had ever heard of Mark Hurd when Hewlett-Packard's board picked him as the new CEO last week, just seven weeks after ousting Ms. Fiorina. Mr. Hurd -- the 48-year-old former CEO of NCR, where he worked for 25 years -- was the H-P board's first choice largely because he is lower profile and more operations-minded than was Ms. Fiorina. While her face regularly graced the covers of magazines, Mr. Hurd has lived most of his life in Ohio and is relatively unknown to the media.
Ms. Fiorina envisioned and then pulled off the bitterly contested acquisition of Compaq Computer three years ago, expanding H-P to an $80-billion-a-year giant. Meanwhile, in his two years as head of NCR, Mr. Hurd methodically restructured businesses, cut costs and returned the company to profitability. H-P Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, in announcing Mr. Hurd's selection, said he met one of the board's key criteria: a proven ability to execute.
In an interview before he was named, Mr. Hurd said he learned that ability -- along with pragmatism and dogged competitiveness -- as a young tennis player. After playing varsity tennis at Baylor University, he decided not to go pro because he realized, "I'd only be a middle-range player, and I didn't want to end up as a coach at a tennis camp." Being a CEO, he added, has a lot more to do with making a profit than leading a glamorous life. "I'm only as popular as the company's last quarterly results," he said.
At NCR, where he rose through the sales-and-marketing ranks, Mr. Hurd was a persistent cost cutter who "made hard decisions other people wouldn't make," says an executive who knows him. "But he never especially liked public speaking," adds the executive, who describes Mr. Hurd as "the quintessential, disciplined COO, rather than a visionary-type CEO."
Other new mind-the-store CEOs were groomed by their celebrity predecessors -- and mastered how to get along in their shadows. Walt Disney's CEO-elect, Robert Iger, couldn't have a more different management style than his boss, Mr. Eisner. Where the veteran Disney leader is mercurial and autocratic, Mr. Iger, currently Disney's president and COO, is known as a calm consensus builder.
The switch from limelight-oriented to operations-minded CEOs isn't an accident. In this post-Enron era, the limelight is a lot riskier since CEOs must keep the reputations of their companies -- and themselves -- above reproach.
"CEOs have spent an awful lot of time trying to raise the price of their company's stock by communicating information to the financial markets," says Stephen Mader, vice chairman of Christian & Timbers and head of the search firm's CEO practice. Now a new crop of CEOs is "rolling up their shirtsleeves and working with their troops to [try to] make money."
The danger is that boards that choose CEOs who are overly focused on day-to-day operations won't have leaders equipped to dream or plan for the future. "Someone has to think 10 years out, and boards have to be wary of choosing low-risk drones who don't have a creative edge," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld , an associate dean at Yale School of Management.
Both Mr. Hurd and Mr. Iger face big learning curves to meet this challenge. At H-P, Mr. Hurd can't simply rely on cost cutting; he must figure out what to do with the company's beleaguered consumer PC business and find a way to unlock innovation. And Mr. Iger, who spent most of his career in the TV-network business, must quickly become more familiar with Disney's theme parks, movies and other crucial areas.
In addition, they, like CEOs everywhere these days, don't have the luxury of staying out of the public eye completely, as corporate leaders of past decades often did. Investors, customers and employees expect them to articulate their strategies, stand up to scrutiny and converse about a wide range of global economic issues. Even if they don't want to be celebrities, knowing how to communicate is one of their most important jobs.
COO型CEO渐受青睐
卡丽?费奥瑞娜(Carly Fiorina)失业了。迈克尔?埃森纳(Michael Eisner)正在思量如何度过他的退休岁月。汉克?格林伯格(Hank Greenberg)在成为多项刑事和民事调查的目标后也不得不腾出他的转角办公室。
似乎天天都有著名商界人物在那些寻求变革的公司董事的压力下离职、被逐或被迫退休的事情发生。但倘若名人首席执行长已经过时，什么才是转角办公室的流行趋势呢？
不仅是远见，不仅是制定长期战略，当然也不仅是在电视镜头面前表现出来的机敏，许多董事会更青睐的那些能管事的首席执行长(CEO)。实用主义、对日常营运和利润的关注才是当今的潮流。此外，首席执行长还要能与董事和其他高级管理人士进行团队协作。
从许多方面来看，这些都是首席营运长(COO)的传统工作职责。近年来，首席营运长的职位在许多公司已经被取消，它被认为是首席执行长在充当公司公众形象的同时也应该承担的职责。虽然以前的首席执行长把充当公司公众形象的工作放在相对重要的位置，但他们的继任者则不那么爱出风头，反倒更倾向于关注公司内部事务。
在惠普(Hewlett-Packard)董事会上周选择马克?赫德(Mark Hurd)为新任首席执行长的时候，科技界之外很少有人听说过他的名字。这项任命距离费奥瑞娜出局仅7周。现年48岁的赫德此前为NCR的首席执行长，他在NCR供职达25年之久。赫德之所以成为惠普董事会的首选，主要是因为与费奥瑞娜相比，他较为低调，且更关注公司营运。在费奥瑞娜频频出现在各大杂志封面上的时候，赫德一生大部分时间都居住在俄亥俄州，而且也相对少为人知。
3年前，费奥瑞娜设想并成功实现对康柏电脑(Compaq Computer)的收购，通过这场争夺激烈的竞购，她将惠普拓展为一家年收入达800亿美元的巨擘。与此同时，赫德在执掌NCR的两年中有条不紊地重组业务、削减成本，使公司重返盈利轨道。惠普董事长帕特里夏?邓恩(Patricia Dunn)在宣布赫德的任命时表示，他符合董事会的一项核心标准：即公认的执行能力。
赫德在他被任命惠普新掌舵人之前的一次采访中表示，他在年少时的网球训练生涯中掌握了这种能力，还有实用主义和顽强的竞争力。在Baylor University大学网球队打了几年球之后，赫德决定放弃成为职业运动员，因为他意识到自己只能成为一个中流选手，而他可不想最后的结局就是成为网球训练营的教练。赫德还说，作为一个首席执行长，实现盈利比过一种光鲜的生活有更多的事情要做。
赫德在NCR供职期间，从销售和营销部门做起，一路平步青云。一位熟悉赫德的管理人士称，他坚持削减成本，作出了许多其他人不愿作出的艰难决定，但他从来不大喜欢在公开场合讲话。他称赫德是一位典型的严于律己的首席营运长，而不是那种不切实际的首席执行长。
其他新任的能管事的首席执行长都曾在他们的明星前任领导下干过事，因此也学会了如何在他们的影子下工作。沃尔特-迪斯尼(Walt Disney)即将上任的首席执行长罗伯特?伊格尔(Robert Iger)的管理风格与他的老板埃森纳截然不同。作为迪斯尼老资格的领导人，埃森纳反复无常、独裁专制，而现为迪斯尼总裁和首席营运长的伊格尔是出了名的和事佬。
首席执行长从公众型转向营运型并非偶然。在后安然(Enron)时代，首席执行长们必须维持公司和他们自身的声誉以便压住谴责的声音，暴露在聚光灯下要显得危险得多。
猎头公司Christian & Timbers的副董事长斯蒂芬?梅德(Stephen Mader)称，首席执行长花费了大量时间与金融市场沟通信息，希望以此来提升公司股价。而今，一批新的首席执行长正摩拳擦掌，与他们的管理团队一道努力赚钱。梅德同时是Christian & Timbers首席执行长业务部门的主管。
这种转变的危险在于：选择那些过于关注于日常营运的首席执行长的董事会将失去对未来进行设想和计划的领导人。耶鲁大学管理学院副院长杰弗里?索南费尔德(Jeffrey Sonnenfeld)称，有人要花上10年才能想明白，董事会必须警惕选择那些毫无创造力的领导人，他们没什么风险，但通常也很平庸。
要应对这样的挑战，赫德和伊格尔都需要学习。在惠普，赫德不能只靠削减成本；他必须想方设法激活公司陷入困境的消费者个人电脑业务，并找到打开创新大门的途径。而对于大部分职业生涯都在电视网络业务摸爬滚打的伊格尔来说，他必须尽快熟悉迪斯尼的主题公园、电影和其他关键的业务。
此外，像如今所有地方的首席执行长一样，他们可没法像过去几十年的首席执行长那样享受完全远离公众视线的待遇。投资者、客户和雇员期望他们明确表达战略计划，正视调查，并就广泛的全球经济问题发表看法。即便他们不想成为名人，知道如何沟通也是最重要的工作之一。
