McKinsey Classics | September 2013

Using CEO transitions to shake up companies

An entrenched status quo besets even the most flexible organizations, for all managers must know who is important, how to get things done, and what success really means. Although a new CEO’s arrival disrupts this web of convention, the resulting period of unsettling change is also a time of opportunity. To learn how companies—and freshly appointed chief executives—can use it to challenge the established corporate order, read “Managing CEO transitions,” (1994), an article on a topic that’s more relevant than ever now that their number is rising.