A rare event in the business world last week: everyone seemed to agree about something. When Procter & Gamble’s former chief executive, A.G. Lafley, announced he would be retiring as its chairman in the new year, there was universal acclaim for his work at the company. Fortune magazine’s verdict was typical. “It is not overstating things to say that Lafley brought P&G into the next century,” it said.
Well done, A.G. But just to disrupt this mood of consensus for a moment, let me restate my belief that, sometimes, too much attention gets paid to individual CEOs, and not enough to the work that goes on elsewhere inside businesses. A.G. did not invent P&G’s blockbuster cleaning product Swiffer, for example, or lead on every aspect of the company’s merger with Gillette.
How important are CEOs, exactly? “The CEO is responsible for creating and leading the team that will deliver great performance,” says Morten Hansen, professor of management at the University of California at Berkeley, and also at Insead. “A CEO can have great impact by creating a strong team.”
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