Canadian Board Index - CEO Facts Canada

Every year, Spencer Stuart sends me a copy of their 'Canadian Spencer Stuart Board Index - Board Trends and Practices of Leading Canadian Companies'. Yesterday's mail brought the 2009 study.

This years theme: 'The Route to the Top and Company Performance in CEO Transition' is and interesting look at how Canadian CEO's get to the stop, how long they stay and what they accomplish.

Some interesting facts from the study:

Internal Promotion: The rate of internal promotion to CEO has remained unchanged in the past decade (70% - which seems like a pretty good #) despite increased focus on succession planning.

Industry Background: in 2009, 83% of CEO's recruited from outside the firm came from the same industry grouping as the firm. That's up from 50% 10 years ago. One in four companies now go abroad to get that industry experience up from one in ten a decade ago.

Turnover: 13% is the 2009 # for annual CEO turnover, vs. 10% ten years ago. However, forced departures is at 44% of all turnovers, vs 27% - 30% in the past.

Tenure: the median stint for CEO's who survived successfully is 5 years. Only 10% survived seven to nine years.

Performance/Backgrounds: Interesting. In every case where a new CEO was brought in, the companies led by externally recruited CEO's performed better. Also, finance types performed the best. Sales/marketing types didn't. Period.

I'm not sure there's any real surprises here given trends in governance, performance and the economy. Thoughts?

The Next Big Technology Thing

My cool friend Paula stopped by the other day.

Paula's cool for a whole bunch of cool reasons. She lives in California. She runs a technology IR firm. She hangs out with big name clients. Coolest of all, every time I see her - like once or twice/year, Paula always shares her "you wanna know what I think the next big trend in technology is going to be?".

I first got impressed - hey, I'm just not cool like her - when a few years ago she got all excited about the idea that video would be a big hit on small screens - like cell phones. Seriously, I didn't get it. Who would ever want to watch video on their cell phone? I was polite. I might have even faked some enthusiasm.

Of course, she was right.

Since then I've become a serous believer. She's always right. And her next big idea makes more sense than TV on my cell phone. Wanna know what it is?

Scrubbing the internet clean of personal and corporate information.....as in, the kids are turning 4 and pretty good with Google...how do I get rid of those pictures of me skinny dipping in front of City Hall?!



Paula compared it to erasing tattoos. Erasing tattoos is big business. I saw this on TV the other day.....over 65% of people with tattoos end up regretting them. Tattoo removal is big.

Internet removal could be huge.

I'm not a techie (really, have you seen my picture?!) so I have no idea what technology will be required to do internet erasure. But I know this - if it's bits and bytes - it's gotta be possible. Further, if Paula's talking about it, I assume some VC somewhere is already funding it.

By the way, I was just kidding about skinny dipping in front of city hall.

I had my shoes on.