But what about Tom Rogers at Primedia, Steve Case at AOL Time Warner, Martha Stewart at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom. Once hailed as superstar CEOs, none remains CEO and two are facing jail.
On the other hand, Jim Collins in his book Good To Great notes that "celebrity leaders... are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great". Have you ever heard of Darwin Smith at Kimberly-Clark, Colman Mockler at Gillette, or Ken Iverson at Nucor. They led their companies to outperform the stock market by an average of 6.9 times over a fifteen year period during which GE outperformed the market by only 2.8 times.
The CEO usually gets too much credit for the success of a company so when a company brings in a superstar "savior" to turn around the company, they are paying too much for nothing special in the long run, and they are passing up capable people within their own organization. Instead, find a CEO who is more concerned about what he can build the company into than what he can get from it.
So why does the myth of the superstar CEO persist? Vote in our poll or add your comments to the discussion.