2012 Leadership Summit

On Sep­tem­ber 27^th, 2012, Lon­er­gan Part­ners held its sec­ond annu­al net­work­ing sum­mit of pub­lic com­pa­ny CEOs in the Sil­i­con Val­ley at the Rose­wood Hotel near Stanford. 

The goal was to talk pri­vate­ly about the role of the board in cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, and in par­tic­u­lar to focus on board/​CEO inter­ac­tion. Top­ics includ­ed: cor­po­rate strat­e­gy for­ma­tion, goal-set­ting, board/​management eval­u­a­tions and a dis­cus­sion on board com­po­si­tion. With 22 tech­nol­o­gy CEOs in atten­dance, the event was a live­ly and spir­it­ed interaction.

• The #1 mis­take CEOs and Chair­man report­ed for their first two years was fail­ure to take action when inher­it­ing non-per­form­ing mem­bers of senior man­age­ment ear­ly in their CEO tenure.
• Chair­men can often help new CEOs eval­u­ate and rate their peo­ple bet­ter than the (new) CEO can.
• The Chairman’s role has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the last 10 years in com­pa­nies where there are dif­fer­ent CEOs and Chair­men. The board chair is often the main board inter­face point for the CEO, giv­ing the CEO insights on board thinking.
• When the Chair­man and the CEO work well togeth­er, the com­pa­ny works bet­ter as a result. While not always easy, the Chair­man and the CEO have to respect each oth­er enough to pro­vide each oth­er with frank feedback.
• Oper­at­ing teams are usu­al­ly ​‘tuned in’ to board/​management inter­ac­tions and want to hear they are achiev­ing clear and pro­duc­tive communication.
• The Chair­man is increas­ing­ly respon­si­ble for the con­sti­tu­tion of the board, ensur­ing that each board mem­ber adds sig­nif­i­cant val­ue. The Chair­man is some­times required to replace under-per­form­ing board mem­bers with the sup­port of fel­low board members.
• The group par­tic­i­pat­ed in an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the lev­el of oper­at­ing detail the board should engage in. While no con­sen­sus was reached, it’s clear that some boards are deeply involved in busi­ness oper­a­tions while oth­ers are involved at the strat­e­gy and gov­er­nance lev­els only.