'Grab the Strange Opportunities'

Want a tip for getting ahead in your career? Follow this advice from GE's Susan Peters: "Grab the strange opportunities."

Peters (pictured) is vice president of executive development and chief learning officer for General Electric Co. She was a compelling speaker at the 14th Annual Wharton Leadership Conference (see post below).

She joined GE in 1979 and served in human resource roles in several GE businesses in the U.S. As she explained to the conference attendees, there came a point in her career with the company that she wanted some global operating experience, so she took an overseas assignment — one that was actually a step down. Hence, the strange opportunity.

But that potentially risky gambit actually propelled her upward trajectory with GE. She returned to the U.S. and onto a new leadership track. Today is responsible for talent identification, leadership development, training, performance management, and succession planning for all GE executives worldwide.

That leadership lesson certainly resonates with me. In 1981 I got a call out of the blue asking me to come talk with the new owners of a business journal called Directors & Boards. At the time I was the senior editor of a weekly business magazine and was very happy in my job, with no thoughts of moving on. I checked out this new opportunity, and didn't much care for what I saw. Directors & Boards was then a rather staid academic journal, devoted to an arcane topic. Corporate governance? What the heck was that? It wasn't even a term in the popular lexicon then. And who cared about boards of directors, anyway? I had been in business journalism for five years by that time and had yet to write a single word about a corporate board. No thanks. I walked away.

I am not sure what it was, but the owners saw something in me. Over the course of several months they kept me on the hook, kept arranging the occasional lunch and office visit to talk up the prospects for this publication — to be a prestige journal of leadership addressing the concerns of the preeminent business ruling class in the country.

So, one day, I did it. They wore me down. I grabbed this strange opportunity. And here I am almost 30 years later. I sure wasn't sure of it at the time, but it seems to have been the right move at the right time for what I was destined to do with my life and career.

There is a governance dimension in Susan Peters' lesson here too. Sometimes board invitations come wrapped as strange opportunities. "You're asking me to serve on that board? Are you crazy?" Maybe so. How inviting can it seem to be asked to help pull a company or a nonprofit institution out of a financial tailspin, maybe even a bankruptcy situation? Or to right the ship after a scandal of some kind? Or maybe it's a succession crisis that looks daunting?

Rather than categorically swat away any such invitation, give deep consideration to whether it is, instead, a strange opportunity that should be grabbed.

A Director as CEO Successor

On June 3 major regional bank Wilmington Trust Corp. announced that Chairman and CEO Ted Cecala was retiring. He is giving up the CEO post immediately and will remain chairman until July 19. Board member Donald Foley, an independent director who was a senior executive with ITT Corp., was named CEO. The change at the top took the market by surprise, and investors did not react well.

This is the latest example of something that we see with some frequency in CEO succession — a board turning to one of its own to fill a sudden vacancy. Such incidents always raise an important question: Should there be, as a rule, on a board of 10 or 12 people at least one or two directors able to step in as CEO in the event of an emergency?

We raised this question in a classic advisory published in Directors & Boards in 1996, following of rash of cases of boards yanking one of their own to plug a succession vacuum — which, come to think of it, is often of their own making for not doing a proper job of succession oversight in the first place. John Burlingame, formerly a vice chair of General Electric Co., and board recruiter Roger Kenny (pictured, now heading the board services practice for CTPartners) teamed up to address a range of pros and cons in resorting to this stop-gap succession measure.

To synthesize their overall conclusions: yes, it makes a lot of sense for a board to be armed with this capability in the event of a sudden vacancy, which can arise from all manner of untoward scenarios. Here is one perfectly understandable situation that they posited:

"You may have the perfect succession plan in place, but there may be two candidates to whom you want to give another six months or a year before you decide on which to choose. Or, in a tragic situation, you lose your CEO and his designated successor in a plane crash. In these cases, if you can make a director the temporary CEO without disrupting the relationship of the internal management and the external directors, it may well be the smartest thing to do."

A big potential negative, they pointed out, in either expressly designating or having a gentlemen's understanding that a certain board member could be the CEO in extremis is the potential threat to the current CEO — does the CEO know if he has "a threatening contender" on his hands? — and also the likelihood of politicizing the boardroom, i.e., "creating a separate class of director."

Notwithstanding such risks, "having a qualified executive sitting around the table understanding the company's strategies, operations, and culture" is a kind of insurance that many companies might be wise to embrace, Burlingame and Kenny advise. But not as wise as doing a first-rate job of managing an orderly succession process in the first place.

Memorial Day 2010

Memorial Day has particular resonance for me, being a proud veteran of four years in the U.S. Navy during the Viet Nam War era (although, thankfully, never setting foot in Southeast Asia). For a day of tribute like this one, I try to cite something special on this blog that appropriately ties in to the essence of the holiday. Here is that something special.

The following are a few passages from a speech that General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt (pictured) delivered at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Dec. 9, 2009.

From his intro: "First and foremost, let me tell you how honored I am to be here with you today. I've always been an admirer of West Point, and the character and accomplishments of its graduates. I'm awed by their heroism and self-sacrifice in the wars they've fought and the peace they've kept.

"West Point graduates are responsible for some of the world's greatest engineering feats. They've led some of the most important advances in aviation and medicine and information technology. They've founded colleges and businesses and charities.

"We have 11,000 veterans working at General Electric: 238 West Point graduates, and nearly 600 from all the service academies. We actively recruit from the military because we have learned that the values you bring to our company are essential to our success.

"A recent Gallup poll asked Americans: 'Who do you admire?' It will please you to know that the military finished first, with a 77% approval rating. Conversely, big business and Congress received approval from only 20% of our fellow citizens. People have lost faith in many big institutions. . . ."

And from his closing: "Like all Americans, I read about the sacrifices you and your colleagues have made in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. And I am sure that all of you have friends who have been killed or wounded during the war.

"Their example, and the example of every American who stands in harm's way so that we may be secure in our freedom to build our businesses and follow our dreams and improve our lives, is the voice of our national conscience.

"Few of us will ever do what many of you will do for duty, honor and country. But America doesn't expect heroism from all of us. It does expect us to be good citizens of this country where no one's dreams are too big, a country that is defended so bravely by others. It expects us to honor the sacrifice made on our behalf by making the best use of the freedom you protect. Wherever our talents lie, and whenever our conscience requires, we must all, to the best of our abilities, help keep America the great force for good it has long been. We are trying to do that at GE.

"America is at a turning point. The U.S. military defends our freedom to succeed, and your values will help to direct our renewal. It has been a great privilege to talk with you."

And for me, on this Memorial Day 2010, a great privilege to share Mr. Immelt's remarks.