FIELD NOTES ON CEOS_
We have worked extensively assessing senior executives, and our work always builds on the science. These are our thoughts on some of the organisational science articles that have influenced our thinking. Written by us, not by AI.
Three channels of CEO influence
The CEO’s ability to influence executives is important for management team effectiveness. But if you ask a psychologist, a strategist, and a sociologist how CEOs influence their execs, you might get three different answers. The first channel, emphasised by psychologists, considers influence from behavioural interactions between the CEO and the executives, e.g., charisma and other inspirational behaviours.
The second channel, studied by strategists, occurs according to the boundaries of formal functional roles, e.g., CEO and executives interact according to the titles they have been prescribed, CEO-CFO, CEO-COO. The last channel, studied by sociologists, considers influence that happens through power dynamics. This is the formal or informal influence executives accumulate over people and resources. Skilful CEOs will leverage all three channels.
Source: Georgakakis, Heyden, Oehmichen & Ekanayake (2022). Four decades of CEO-TMT interface research: A review inspired by role theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 33(3), 101354.
Early joiners and start-up trajectory
Start-ups with stronger early joiners show better trajectories in revenue, productivity and longevity. Using premature team member death in start-ups as a natural experiment, the authors show that losing an early joiner has persistent negative effects on start-up firm size and performance for at least a decade. The negative effect was weaker for later hires. Organisational capital lives in the early team.
Source: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28417/w28417.pdf