How to Select and Nurture a Satya Nadela like CEO for a MOGI Company, for the Future: To Transcend or Not to Transcend Peter’s Principle

The company boards often struggle to find the person for the CEO job. MOGI companies often propel the internal person for the job, more out of reward considerations rather than strategic reasons. In the tumultuous time as it is now, the CEO selection process should be more process-oriented rather than simple individual preferences. It is often told as a caution that a person, having done all good things in his/her prior appointments within the organization, would not necessarily be good in the CEO job. As a general practice, when organizations look for continuity, they choose a trusted and proven internal person but in case the organizations are facing new challenges they prefer an external person as CEO. Microsoft had both challenges in 2014. It was facing sluggish sales as well as the rapid changes from moving over to the cloud platform from the workstations. Yet they chose Satya Nadela and the result, for 10 years has been nothing short of extraordinary. The moral of the story is that the board has to do a thorough job without bias and inclinations to choose the right candidate as CEO to deal with the challenges of the organization.