Page 130 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

over for the CEO’s job at Avon in favor of an outsider, she was named
CEO. Of course, she was only 39 years old when she lost out on the top
job. Time was on her side, so she stuck around and prevailed in the end.
However, the outcome of the succession race at General Electric in 2000
is more typical. Within eight days of Jack Welch’s announcement that Jef-
frey Immelt had won the race, Immelt’s two rivals had left for other organ-
izations, Robert Nardelli to run Home Depot and W. James McNerney, Jr.,
to run 3M.
Clearly, they were not going to stay on as losers reporting to their for-
mer rival even for a minute.
There are very, very few real contenders who can bear to report to a for-
mer rival, no matter what leaving costs them in terms of deferred com-
pensation and pensions.
You, too, should be prepared to go if
THERE ARE VERY, you lose.
VERY FEW REAL Why do I say that? Because, if you are
CONTENDERS WHO truly ambitious, you are unlikely to be
CAN BEAR TO happy if you stay. It’s not just about the
REPORT TO A closing off of opportunities, the loss of
FORMER RIVAL, NO the bigger money and the bigger
MATTER WHAT responsibility. It’s also about the slow
LEAVING COSTS slide, the humiliation, the death by a
THEM. YOU, TOO, thousand cuts.
SHOULD BE Generally, when your rival first tri-
PREPARED TO GO IF umphs, you two have dinner, and you
YOU LOSE. promise to be good to each other, for
the children’s sake.
But the first day you have to walk
into her office, and she’s sitting behind the big desk, and you’re sitting in
the chair in front of the big desk—that’s hard. Your expense account now
has to be signed by her. She gets to pick where you go to lunch. She gets

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