Corporate America looks for a new type of CEO

Has the time come for CEO Version 3.0?

By: Nelson D. Schwartz
November 9, 2007

The first iteration made its mark in the 1990s, as chief executives like Sanford Weill, Gerald Levin, John Welch Jr. and Michael Eisner built empires, and their profiles, at the companies they ran: Citigroup, Time Warner, GE and Disney.

When their shares deflated earlier this decade after the tech bubble burst and various corporate scandals unfolded, a new cadre moved in: the Fix-it Men. They were less charismatic leaders like Charles Prince 3rd of Citigroup and Richard Parsons of Time Warner, whose job it was to repair the excesses and mistakes of their predecessors.

Now, management experts and longtime observers of corporate America say, the current environment demands, and is attracting, yet another kind of chief executive: the team-builder.

"It's someone who can assemble a team that functions as smoothly as a jazz sextet," said Warren Bennis, a professor of management at the University of Southern California.

In the past week, Prince and Parsons both announced they would be stepping aside. Prince's abrupt exit followed huge losses that dragged down Citigroup's long-stagnant stock, while Parsons is retiring at the end of 2007 after a five-year tenure, during which he stabilized the company but failed to move Time Warner shares higher. A third chief executive, E. Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, was forced out late last month after his firm announced an $8.4 billion write-down last month.

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