Recently, businesses have seen a new and interesting trend with ex-CEO’s.  As reported in the Wall Street Journal on November 10^th, 2009, more businesses are inviting ex-CEOs to take an active role in helping their companies to prosper.

This is, certainly, most often happening at troubled companies.  However, more and more big businesses are also installing independent chairmen who were previous CEOs.  The Corporate Library, a governance research firm, says that 46 former CEOs are now chairmen of other companies. This statistic is in stark contrast to the numbers in 2004 when there were only 14.

C. Robert Kidder, the former CEO of Duracell International Inc. and Borden Chemical Inc., for instance, is now at Chrysler Group LLC leading the board.  He spends an average of three days a week at Chrysler, working with their CEO, Sergio Marchionne, and other executives.  He works hard not to micromanage.

Dennis Carey, a senior client partner at Korn/Ferry International says, “These chairmen are strategic equal partners of the CEO because they already demonstrated a successful ‘in the trenches’ style of management.”

Tags: C. Robert Kidder, Dennis Carey

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