Passage 1 What Is a CEO’s Secret to Longevity?
ＣＥＯ長(zhǎng)壽的秘訣 《今日美國(guó)》
[00:04]What is a CEO's Secret to Longevity?
[00:09]Marvel of Joseph Neubauer
[00:12]Joseph Neubauer stands alone in Corporate America
[00:16]as the only Fortune 500 non-founding CEO to make it to his silver anniversary,
[00:23]having passed the 25-year milestone at Aramark almost two years ago.
[00:30]He will likely be joined in August by State Farm Insurance CEO Ed Rust,
[00:37]who at 59, is still six years away from State Farm's mandatory retirement age.
[00:44]Neubauer, 68, says he credits success at the food service,
[00:50]sale and supply company to putting the right people
[00:55]in the right places for growth, and was open and candid with everyone
[01:00]from the board of directors to employees.
[01:03]Oh, and he says it's a good idea to like the job.
[01:08]"Working at any company involves an incredible amount of time and effort,"
[01:14]Neubauer says. "If you don't really enjoy what you are doing,
[01:19]you will never have the passion necessary for long-term success."
[01:24]Many CEOs don't last as long as a refrigerated fruitcake.
[01:30]Although Americans have a reputation for changing jobs frequently,
[01:35]a 2007 study by Towers Perrin found that among workers
[01:40]who have been in the same industry for 20 years or more,
[01:45]40% said they had been with the same company for 20 years plus.
[01:51]Avnet, a giant electronics company with $16 billion in annual revenue,
[01:59]says that of its 2,061 U.S. employees 45 years and older,
[02:06]11% have been with the company for 25 years or more.
[02:12]Fewer than half the CEOs hired to run one of the largest 2,500
[02:18]publicly traded companies are still there eight years later,
[02:22]says Booz & Co. Separately, outsourcing firm Challenger Gray & Christmas
[02:30]tracks CEO departures and says 1,484 left voluntarily
[02:38]or were forced out in 2008, six every business day and the most
[02:44]since it began counting CEO departures in 1999.
[02:50]Some might see the turnover as proof that capitalism
[02:54]is working its Darwinian magic. Corporate boards
[02:59]are an instrument whose basic role is to hire and fire CEOs,
[03:04]says Ralph Ward, publisher of the Boardroom Insider newsletter.
[03:10]He predicts directors will have an "itchy trigger finger" going forward.
[03:15]But oddly, some CEOs who have lasted a long time say it's
[03:21]because they managed to ignore the forces of shareholders
[03:25]trying to pull them in opposite directions.
[03:31]When executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles
[03:35]came up with a list of the longest-lasting Fortune 500 CEOs,
[03:42]only Neubauer, Rust and four other non-founders had started as CEO before 1990.
[03:50]Beating the odds
[03:53]What's the secret of those who beat impossible odds and make a career of CEO
[04:00]By far, the No. 1 secret is to be a founder and CEO of a company
[04:06]that eventually grows very large.
[04:09]Ten founding CEOs still running Fortune 500 companies
[04:14]have been there since before 1980. After that,
[04:18]the reasons for longevity are less certain,
[04:21]and some long-lasting CEOs say the secrets can be completely counterintuitive.
[04:29]Steven Appleton became CEO of Micron Technology at 34. Now 49,
[04:37]Appleton has beaten the odds to survive very stormy times
[04:41]in the semiconductor memory business. The company's stock,
[04:46]which sold for $145 a share in 2000, fell as low as $1.59 a year ago.
[04:56]Still, Appleton remains, and Micron Technology stock has rebounded somewhat,
[05:02]to $10.16.
[05:06]The secret to survival, even while going from "hero to zero,"
[05:10]requires an ability to ignore shareholders, Appleton says.
[05:16]That might seem like blasphemy for a CEO, but Appleton explains
[05:21]that shareholders have different goals.
[05:24]Some would be happy driving the stock price up by
[05:28]eliminating the annual $600 million spent on research and development,
[05:34]but at the expense of the long term.
[05:38]Richard Reese, 63, was CEO of information security firm Iron Mountain
[05:45]for more than 27 years, growing the company from $3 million
[05:50]in annual revenue to $3 billion before retiring in 2008,
[05:56]although he remains chairman. When he first became CEO,
[06:01]he got some advice from Tom Smith,
[06:04]who was managing partner of private investment firm Prescott Investors then
[06:09]and remains so now at age 80.
[06:13]Reese says Smith told him: "Never listen to shareholders.
[06:18]" The advice proved to be a career-extender, Reese says,
[06:22]because each shareholder has an agenda
[06:25]with different investment time horizons.
[06:29]Some want money to be reinvested into the company;
[06:33]others want dividends or stock buybacks.
[06:37]Reese followed Smith's suggestions to turn a deaf ear and do what's right,
[06:43]and it paid off.
[06:45]CEOs who last are company builders, Reese says,
[06:50]with the ability to change tactics as needed. For example,
[06:54]at one point in a career, a CEO may have to raise capital fast,
[07:00]at another point, think strategy, and at another point,
[07:04]push tired workers to the edge without allowing them to crash and burn.
[07:10]Leslie Gaines-Ross, a strategist at public relations firm Weber Shandwick,
[07:16]has made a long career of studying the careers of CEOs' mostly short careers.
[07:22]She says the longest-lasting ones seem to have an ability to be underestimated.
[07:30]Losing sight of their weaknesses
[07:32]and seeing themselves as all powerful are common mistakes among CEOs,
[07:38]Gaines-Ross says.
[07:40]"I'm a proponent of never taking yourself too seriously,
[07:44]but taking your responsibilities with utmost seriousness," Rust says.
[07:49]"It's easy to get a bit insulated at the top,
[07:53]so you have to pursue honest feedback, even to the point of being uncomfortable,"
[07:59]he says.
[08:01]A matter of time
[08:03]Short CEO careers aren't always due to force-out.
[08:08]CEOs are today clinging to their jobs in a recession.
[08:13]Their departures are down 18% in the first 11 months of 2009
[08:19]compared with the first 11 months of the record-setting 2008,
[08:24]says Challenger Gray & Christmas. But it's just a matter of time
[08:29]before the door starts revolving.
[08:33]A study released in November by ExecuNet and Finnegan Mackenzie found
[08:38]that 90% of all executives would think about a new opportunity
[08:43]with a different company. More than 50% are now looking for a new job,
[08:50]and 40% say they will begin their job search when the economy improves.
[08:57]Lehigh University management professor Andrew Ward researched
[09:02]the last major recession in 1990-1991
[09:06]and says that more CEOs were fired in the nine months
[09:11]following the recession than during the nine-month recession itself.
[09:16]Expectations are low in recessions, but performance must pick up
[09:21]when the economy does, Ward says.
[09:24]Some CEOs stay with the same company a long time, and that can, at times,
[09:31]require an element of timing and luck. Dan Amos, 58 and Aflac's CEO for 19 years,
[09:40]says that CEOs who have lasted usually were successful early on,
[09:46]so it was easier to forgive them for inevitable mistakes made down the road.
[09:52]Appleton was fired at Micron Technology within two years,
[09:56]but that dismissal lasted only a week.
[09:59]He was rehired by the board
[10:02]when 22 of 25 Micron executives threatened to resign unless Appleton came back.
[10:10]Amos feels that pleasing shareholders through consistent returns
[10:15]is the fundamental secret to longevity, but the longer a CEO lasts,
[10:20]the more likely something will interrupt that.
[10:23]After years with an increasing stock,
[10:26]Aflac hit the headwinds of the financial crisis,
[10:29]and in less than a year, the stock fell from $67 to $11 a share.
[10:36]It has bounced back to $46.79.
[10:42]Amos says transparency and communication saw him through.
[10:47]"When times are tough, you've got to talk more,"
[10:51]and he ordered the company to post on its website every bond the company owned.
[10:58]John Chambers has been CEO of Cisco Systems since 1995
[11:04]and he recently recommitted to the Cisco board to stay on at least
[11:09]another three to five years. Chambers' secret to longevity:
[11:14]Listen to customers. "If you ask, they will tell you exactly what to do,"
[11:20]he says, "I have received good ideas from customers, even suggestions."
[11:26]Change is not easy, but necessary, Chambers says.
[11:31]"I certainly love a command-and-control style of management.
[11:34]When I say 'turn right,' 64,000 employees do a remarkably good job
[11:40]of turning right, but that is not the future of leadership."
[11:45]CEOs all agree that the job is tougher today than in the past,
[11:51]and 25-year CEOs may grow even more rare in the future.
[11:56]"In the old days, they may not have paid CEOs enough,
[11:59]but they kept them too long," Amos says. "Today, they get paid a lot,
[12:05]but there is an expectation for immediate results."
