generation has no memory of that loyalty bond and instead, as was discussed at the CEO Talent Summit in October (see page 44), companies are often finding themselves needing to sell themselves to employees more than employees are selling themselves to the companies. As Mark puts it, “When I was growing up in the industry, if you left a company at anything less than five years of employment, it was committing corporate treason. Today, they’re bouncing around every few years, asking, ‘Is this the type of company I want to be affiliated with? Otherwise, I’ll pack my bags and go elsewhere.’”
Paula H. J. Cholmondeley
THEN: Vice President and General Manager of Residential Insulation, Owens Corning NOW: CEO, The Sorrel Group; member of several boards of directors, and parttime faculty at National Association of Corporate Directors THE PAST 20 YEARS: A series of personal circumstances led Paula from Owens Corning to Sappi Fine Paper for several years. But what captured and held her attention was board service, starting at Armco Steel and expanding to include Nationwide Mutual Funds, Terex Corporation, Minerals Technologies and several others. Keeping up with her accounting background, she’s chaired five audit committees, as well as a governance committee and a strategy and CSR committee. After she joined the National Association of Corporate Directors, she was introduced to their training programs for directors. “To deepen my knowledge,” she says, “I started teaching for them.” And this, along with her efforts to increase the number of African-Americans and women on boards, led her to
“When I was growing up in the industry, if you left a company at anything less than five years of employment, it was committing corporate treason. Today, they’re bouncing around every few years, asking, ‘Is this the type of company I want to be affiliated with? Otherwise, I’ll pack my bags and go elsewhere.’” —Mark Biestman
create The Sorrel Group, through which she creates a customized program for a handful of new directors each year, helping them “contribute from Day One.” WHAT SHE SAID THEN: “You won’t get the power out of globalization until we figure out how to take the technological capability down to the level of the primary worker.” WHAT SHE SAYS NOW: “This is even more important today. The pace of technological change keeps getting cut in half. Emerging markets are leap-frogging whole generations of technology. The developing countries do not want yesterday’s technology. The worker in India and China wants to use the current technology to build a product customized to their market. And the workforce has the capability to use the technology.”
Henry McGee
THEN: President, HBO Home Video, a division of HBO NOW: Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School, member of several boards of directors THE PAST 20 YEARS: After 34 years at HBO, this former journalist decided it was time to make another transition. His interest in film and his observation that the American documentary film community had
been making films about American business had led him to investigate ways to teach students about business through film, and he put together a syllabus, thinking he’d find a way to teach part time in New York. After presenting his ideas to Harvard Business School, he ended up developing a number of cases and found that he’d fallen in love with teaching and research. HBS asked him to join the faculty, but with a catch—Henry had to make a full-time commitment. “Because I was 60 at the time,” Henry says, “and because I had done well at HBO, I was in a position to take a huge pay cut and follow this great opportunity.” Three years later, Henry, who also serves on a number of boards of directors, still hasn’t taught the film course. But his teaching schedule has remained full, with courses such as the introductory first-year course on leadership and corporate accountability. WHAT HE SAID THEN: “The great CEOs of the future will be the greatest salespeople.” WHAT HE SAYS NOW: “Driven by the twin forces of digitization and globalization, the job of the CEO has become much more complex, moving beyond sales. Selling is still extremely important; it lies at the heart of any enterprise. But the great CEOs of today have to be very good at meeting their responsibility not just to shareholders, but to customers, employees and society, and to do that in a way the creates economic value at the same time that it’s legal and ethical.” —Mike Winkleman
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