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CEO Ready
book

CEO Ready

by Mark Thompson, Byron Loflin, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
November 2025
Beginner to intermediate
272 pages
6h 41m
English
Harvard Business Review Press
Content preview from CEO Ready

8 Embrace the Scrutiny Learn to live under the microscope of assessors and consultants who’ve never had the job

Your selection as CEO can be life or death for a great company. Some 53 percent of the time, the “obvious heir apparent”—the anointed successor in a CEO search—proves to be the wrong choice, according to data from ghSMART, one of the leading firms conducting senior executive assessments.1 These mistakes cost shareholders billions. Forbes notes: “Companies that have to fire their CEO forgo an average of $1.8 billion in shareholder value.”2 Throughout this book, we have emphasized how difficult it is for a board to select any chief executive with so much at stake, particularly a first-time CEO compared with executives who have been ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9798892791694