Succession Planning and Tech Committees
(Not) Passing the Torch
Welcome to this week's news brief.
A lot of?CEOs are worried about succession planning?at their company, according to new research from?Deloitte. Nearly half of the chief executives surveyed said they do not have confidence in or feel neutral about their bench of potential successors.
That's despite 91% of respondents saying they are involved in the development of the candidate pipeline.
Some of the uncertainty may come down to human nature — it can be hard, especially for someone as driven as a CEO, to believe that someone else could do the job just as well as they can, sources said.
Meanwhile, some simply may not feel ready to hand over the reins, even if the board has gently suggested the time is nigh.
"If the board approaches the CEO and says, 'We would like to talk about CEO succession,' and the CEO feels threatened by that, or if they actively resist that, it's time to find a new CEO," one source told Agenda.
'Time and Focus'
The number of?companies with tech committees on the board?has plateaued in recent years, and may even be dropping off, based on recent data from?ESGauge.
"It's a question of time and focus," one source said. "If we establish a committee, is it a committee for committees' sake? Or is this a committee that is truly going to have the time and energy to devote towards overseeing the company's cybersecurity risk profile?"
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